Support the Ms. Foundation! Vote for Us on the Working Assets Donations Ballot -- Deadline August 31, 2010

By casting your vote for the Ms. Foundation for Women in the Working Assets 2010 Annual Donations Ballot you can help the Ms. Foundation provide strategic support to women and girls leading change in their communities and across society.

Through its annual donation program, Working Assets has contributed over $65 million to progressive organizations since 1985 -- including the Ms. Foundation for Women. Past support from Working Assets has enabled work ranging from training women for green jobs to securing basic rights for domestic workers in New York State.

The number of votes the Ms. Foundation receives will determine the size of the contribution Working Assets makes to the Foundation -- which means that your vote can help support the important work we do on behalf of women and girls every day.

Visit Working Assets and show your support for the Ms. Foundation for Women today. If you are a Credo or Working Assets customer, log in with your account information. If you are not a customer, follow the "New to Credo" link and vote by becoming a Credo Action Member. And of course, tell your friends and family who might be interested. Every vote makes a difference!

Cast your vote before December 31, 2010 for the Ms. Foundation for Women -- and help us build women's collective power to ignite change.


Photos by Elizabeth Rapport: [top] Detail, Kentucky Jobs With Justice Voting Rights Rally, Frankfort, Kentucky, March 2010; [bottom] Detail, Dolores Huerta Foundation, Bakersfield, California, March 2008.

Upcoming Event: Evaluating Policy Change and Advocacy

For those of you in the funding community who are already planning your Fall schedules, we have an exciting event to share.

On Wednesday, September 15th from 3:00 - 5;00 pm, Philanthropy New York will present Can You Hear Us Now: Evaluating Policy Change and Advocacy. Among other speakers, the panel will feature the Ms. Foundation's own A. Caroline Hotaling, Program Officer for National Policy and Strategic Opportunities.

The session will explore approaches to evaluating advocacy and public policy funding and the significance of evaluation in the funding process. From the Philanthropy New York site:

The attraction of public policy and advocacy funding is its potential to leverage systemic change. But [how] do you know if it’s working, especially when advocacy work is usually a long-term investment with long-term outcomes?

Evaluation has the potential to inform and strengthen advocacy and policy change work. It yields information for learning and improvement, and for reporting and accountability. Advocacy and policy change evaluation is a critical tool for ensuring that the work is on track—and for identifying when it has gone astray so that course corrections can be made.

Topics will include:

• How advocacy and policy change work is different from other philanthropic work, and how these differences affect evaluation.
• What does interim progress mean? What types of measures are appropriate?
• What needs to be decided when designing an advocacy/policy change evaluation?

CEOs, trustees, program officers, evaluation officers, and other funders are encouraged to attend.

Register now for what's sure to be a thought-provoking event! (Registration closes on Sept. 13.)

[Audio] Program Officer Sangeeta Budhiraja Explores Grantee Solutions in Radio Interview

Last Tuesday Ms. Foundation Program Officer Sangeeta Budhiraja was featured on Juggling Act with Dr. Lori Sokol. The show on Connecticut's AM1490 WGCH strives “to empower individuals to triumph over gender-related societal limits so they can reach their full potential unhindered.”

The Ms. Foundation’s wonderful Sangeeta Budhiraja jumped right into this conversation, addressing the importance of affordable child care, the fight for New York State’s Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, and the future of health care. Sangeeta talked eloquently and informatively about these important social issues that affect not just women but everyone in our society, and the work of the Foundation’s grantees advocating for just and inclusive solutions. She elucidated the Ms. Foundation’s particular belief that society can only reach its full potential when power and possibility are not limited by gender, race, class, sexuality, or age and explained why the Foundation provides support to a broad range of seemingly disparate organizations working on issues ranging from reproductive justice, to immigrant rights, to sexual violence, and health care.

Download the full interview [mp3] or listen on the player below [27:05].

MassCOSH Fights Workplace Harassment Directed at Latinas

Ms. Foundation grantee MassCOSH (Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health) is shining a light on how one particular occupational hazard is impacting Latina women across Massachusetts: sexual harassment and assault in the workplace.

Though it's not the kind of offense you might think of as a typical "occupational hazard" sexual harassment and assault can make going to work a living hell for employees. And in the state of Massachusetts, Latina women -- often working in low wage jobs -- are finding themselves at an increasing risk of having to confront abuse from their employers, who many times target women who lack the resources (both financial and linguistic) to fight back.

In July, MassCOSH took a stand on the issue, in the hopes of bringing this rising trend to an end. They brought together more than twenty local Latina and Brazilian women workers for a workshop designed to empower them with information about sexual harassment -- including how to identify this kind of abuse and how to organize to bring it to a stop.

“In this group, women are free to speak about issues they face in their workplace, with the goal of supporting each other so we can overcome the problem of harassment,” says Isabel Lopez, MassCOSH’s Worker Center Coordinator. MassCOSH also aims to have the women take what they've learned in the workshop and pass along the information by doing outreach and education in their own communities.

This kind of organizing lies at the very heart of the Ms. Foundation's approach to creating a more just and safe world for women, girls and communities. Read more about the work MassCOSH is doing to end the sexual harassment of women in the workplace -- we're exceptionally proud to call them a grantee partner!

Ms. Foundation Grantees Organize National Week of Action for Reproductive Justice

Want something to cheer about? How about this: it's Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice!

Organized by an amazing group of Ms Foundation grantees -- the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights -- this first annual Week of Action is an effort to raise awareness about how the fight for reproductive justice impacts Latinas, and to engage the community in actions and events that help protect the reproductive rights of women everywhere.

In addition to hosting a blog carnival about Latinas and contraception (which you are invited to participate in), the week's organizers have also planned live events in cities from New York to Texas to Minnesota to California.

And of course, you can also participate in the fight to ensure that all women have affordable access to birth control and other reproductive services by taking action online. Encourage your Congressional representatives to "ask the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to support comprehensive family planning services that include contraception as a key women’s health service under the Women’s Health Amendment."

The Week of Action runs until August 15th; stand up for reproductive justice today!

Help support organizations and programs fighting for our reproductive rights! Donate now and a special matching grant will double your support -- dollar-for-dollar -- for reproductive justice organizations led by women of color.

Economy Worsens for Single Mothers, Women of Color

New numbers on the economy are proving that when times get hard, women are hit hardest.

The Obama Administration is busy touting that overall unemployment held steady in July, at 9.5% (or 14.6 million Americans). [The New York Times's Bob Herbert reports that even these numbers vastly understate the proportions of the crisis.]  But that number masks some troubling facts about who's continuing to lose jobs, even as others gain them. The ones losing out, in this case, happen to be women -- particularly single mothers and women of color.

On their Womenstake blog, Ms. Foundation grantee the National Women's Law Center reports:

Unemployment for women who head families shot up to 13.4 percent in July from 12.1 percent in June. This marks the highest unemployment rate for this particularly vulnerable group since the recession began in December 2007 and the highest rate in over 25 years.
Unemployment among African-American women jumped from 11.8 percent in June to 12.9 percent in July. The situation was similar for Hispanic women, whose unemployment rate increased by 1.1 percentage points to 12.1 percent in July, marking this group's highest unemployment rate since 1986.

Notably, 62 percent of the jobs lost in July were lost by women. (There's that pesky "mancession" for you again.)

Though government officials are likely to avoid discussing these facts, the people withing these communities have long known how precariously placed they are. As our Community Voices on the Economy Poll found in June, two-thirds of Latinas say that their personal situation has been affected by the country’s economic situation, and more than half report that they or someone in their household has lost a job in the past year. Meanwhile, 55% of African-American women report that they've been worried about the economy for five years or more.

If only the people actually running the economy had been worried for that long.

SWAN Sets Record Straight on Costs of Military Sexual Assault

Did you know that:

• 3,230 military sexual assaults were reported in 2009, an increase of 11% from fiscal year 2008?
• 79% of women serving in the military since Vietnam report experiencing sexual harassment?
• 62.9% of female combat veterans and 74.5% of female noncombat veterans seeking treatment for PTSD report experiencing a sexual assault while in service?

Military Sexual Trauma (or MST) has become an epidemic in our armed services. So much so, in fact, that the Veterans Administration is now spending more than $820 million annually to treat health-related sexual assault issues among veterans -- the majority of them women.

While the Department of Defense remains largely silent about the pervasiveness of sexual assault in the military -- and about their inability to punish servicemembers committing these crimes (only 8% of perpetrators are prosecuted) -- grassroots groups are now putting pressure on the Pentagon and Congress to take a more hands on role in ending MST.

To help draw attention to the insidiousness of sexual crimes in the military, Ms. Foundation grantee SWAN (Service Women's Action Network) has just released a useful fact sheet [pdf] on MST. In addition to data on the number of crimes committed, and the barriers victims face if and when they seek justice, SWAN also crunches the numbers to show just how much this epidemic is costing the American people each year. "Perhaps when the Pentagon and Congress realize that this issue amounts to millions of dollars of taxpayer money... they might decide to finally do something to curb the epidemic sexual assault and harassment in the military," says Anu Bhagwati, Executive Director of SWAN.

With studies now showing that sexual harassment causes the same rates of PTSD in women veterans as combat does in men, the time has clearly come to put an end to what certainly qualifies as a national disgrace. Kudos to SWAN for doing the hard work and getting the facts straight. Our women and men in uniform are lucky to have advocates like you, fighting on their behalf.