Labor Rights are Women’s Rights

The Ms. Foundation for Women charges forward in its unwavering commitment to fortify and extend labor protections to workers across the country. This week, Aleyamma Mathew, Senior Program Officer for Economic Justice, joined an army of progressive organizations and labor union leaders at the AFL-CIO convention. She strategized with group leaders who represent minorities, women, youth, environmentalists and LGBTQ people to resolve how they could unite and work together to strengthen the labor movement to effectively defeat “entrenched corporate interests" and achieve "shared prosperity," as labor leader Richard Trumka expressed. Click here to learn more about labor's new approach to coalition building. 

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Inspiring a Movement: Ending Child Sexual Abuse at the 2013 National Sexual Assault Conference

By Natalie Sullivan, Ms. Foundation for Women interim Program Officer, Safety

Last week, the Ms. Foundation for Women hosted a mini track on child sexual abuse prevention at the National Sexual Assault Conference in Hollywood, Calif. In partnership with PreventConnect, a project of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, OAASIS Oregon, Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, Ping Chong + Co., Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina and Samaritan Counseling Center, Ms. hosted five workshops on child sexual abuse prevention. 


The 2013 National Sexual Assault Conference (NSAC) kicked off with flying colors on the morning of Aug. 28, 2013 – the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Opening speaker Lynn Rosenthal of the Office on Violence Against Women set the tone for the conference by offering that “there is a connection between the work [we’re] doing for women’s freedom and King’s work.” Faye Washington, of the YWCA Los Angeles, added, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.” With such calls to action, 1,400 of us from across the U.S. spent the next three days gathered together to “Inspire a Movement, Invest in Change, and Imagine…” what a world without sexual assault would look like, and what it would take to build a vibrant movement to arrive there.

I was thrilled and humbled to be in the presence of a diverse range of movement makers. From service providers to therapists to policy makers to teachers to activists (and many, many more), we roamed the halls, meeting rooms and streets of Hollywood strategizing about how to end the culture of violence and sexual abuse that is so pervasive in our lives and communities. The Ms. Foundation, alongside our grantee partners, was lucky enough to host five workshops specific to ending child sexual abuse – an issue that too often has fallen on the periphery of and between existing movements – with the guiding belief that ending child sexual abuse is one of the most strategic actions we can take to improve the safety of communities everywhere. Our mini track, “Building a Movement to End Child Sexual Abuse,” highlighted several cutting-edge strategies currently led by our grantee partners across the U.S. to prevent child sexual abuse.

We opened our mini track with Foundations for Change: Sharing Key Approaches to Ending Child Sexual Abuse, hosted by David Lee, Leona Smith DiFaustino, Cordelia Anderson and Joan Tabachnick. Drawing upon lessons learned and strategies shared throughout our and PreventConnect’s National Web Conference Series to End Child Sexual Abuse, this workshop led attendees through an introduction to the various strategies currently used in the field to prevent child sexual abuse, including policy advocacy, faith-based organizing, perpetrator prevention and survivor activism.

Next, Christi Hurt and Sarah Vidrine of Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina led a workshop on what it took to build a statewide coalition in North Carolina focused on creating a state primary prevention policy package to end child sexual abuse. Christi and Sarah walked attendees through the process of building a coalition that brings diverse communities, multidisciplinary teams and the voice of survivors to the table, while maintaining focus on one sole objective. The workshop proved to be a fertile space for the exchange of ideas, examination of how to overcome challenges and exploration of how other states might be able to take on such a model.

Our third workshop, Convening to End Child Sexual Abuse: A Strategic Choice for Movement Building, was led by Klarissa Oh, Linda Crockett, Cordelia Anderson, Billye Jones Mulraine, Christi Hurt, Randy Ellison and myself. During this workshop, we explored why convening is key to movement building and why storytelling is crucial in the work we do to end violence. We invited attendees to consider how they might do the same in their own work.

Day two of our mini track kicked off with Linda Crockett and Deb Helt of Samaritan Counseling Center’s Safe Church Project. Linda and Deb showcased the Safe Church project, an interactive one-year ecumenical group training designed to shift congregational culture to inspire prevention of child sexual abuse within churches and communities. Currently launched in Pennsylvania, they are planning to take the project national soon.

Finally, our mini track closed with an arts-based workshop led by Sara Zatz and Amita Swadhin, who hosted a documentary screening of Ping Chong + Co’s Secret Survivors. In addition to showing the documentary, Sara and Amita guided attendees through an interactive discussion and creative workshop on using the arts to end child sexual abuse. They presented the Secret Survivors toolkit designed to complement the documentary and support community and education partners in sparking dialog to end child sexual abuse.

This conference enabled child sexual abuse to come out of the shadows and into the foreground into a national dialog of violence prevention, and I thank CALCASA and their partners, National Sexual Violence Resource Center and Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape for their vision in organizing this conference.  I continue to be moved and pushed in many ways by the brilliance and depth of knowledge of those who do this work. For me, conferences reinforce the benefit of face-to-face exchanges of ideas, breaking down silos, so that we continuously remember how each of our pieces of work supports the greater whole. This year’s NSAC fully lived up to those expectations, laying the groundwork for progress and continued movement building to end violence.

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Ban the Scan: Fighting Child Care Barriers in Mississippi

The Ms. Foundation for Women is standing in solidarity with low-income families in Mississippi and the child care providers who serve them as they fight injustice.

Ms. grantee Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative recently helped win a preliminary injunction against a fingerprint scanning system that would stigmatize low-income women, who rely on federal subsidies, and erect operational barriers for child care providers. This system has the potential to harm both low-income families and child care business owners.

Low-income parents who receive federal child care vouchers would be forced to scan their fingerprints when dropping their children off at child care each day. This system treats low-income parents like criminals, singling them out from the higher-earning families at their child care centers.

It’s standard practice for child care providers to charge weekly or monthly rates, for families both paying in full and using subsidies. But under the fingerprint scanning system, child care providers would be paid only for the specific times that children receiving vouchers are present. Child care providers would experience a decrease in reimbursement when children who rely on subsidies are absent.

Families might decline the voucher system for privacy reasons, and child care providers may stop accepting children who rely on vouchers because of the decrease in reimbursement. The end result could be a severe curtailment in child care access for low-income families and a loss of jobs for child care providers whose businesses fold.

Mississippi has allocated $12 million to Xerox over five years to operate this system – money that would be better spent enrolling more children in the voucher program, according to Cassandra Welchin at the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative.

We couldn’t agree more! The Ms. Foundation is following developments closely and spreading the word about the impact on women and families who need our support the most.


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Infographics for Change: Elizabeth Blasi and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice

This summer, Ms. launched its inaugural fellowship program with New York City’s Parsons The New School for Design, pairing three Parsons MFA design students and graduates with three different Ms. grantees working in reproductive justice. With an eye on serving economically, racially and geographically marginalized women in particular, the partnerships will produce public education campaigns and interactive tools to better equip women and girls in the fight for their right to accessible, comprehensive health care. 

By Contessa Gayles, Ms. Foundation intern and graduate student in journalism at NYU

Committed to “discovering ways that design can enhance educational engagement, encourage civic participation and motivate people to exercise their capacity to impact their own community,” 23-year-old Elizabeth Blasi will be entering her second year at Parsons’ Transdisciplinary Design MFA program this fall. “My personal connection to women’s health and reproductive justice stems from being raised in a strong Catholic, and often financially impaired, household,” Blasi tells Ms. She explains how, in her experience, being raised Catholic meant discussions about contraception were never on the table. The cultural, economic, racial and policy barriers that adversely impact women’s ability to make appropriate health decisions for themselves and their families, and the significant disparities in health that result, have inspired Blasi to  put her design skills to use for the advancement of all women’s right to health.

For her fellowship, Blasi is working with California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ), a statewide policy and advocacy organization for the advancement of the reproductive health and rights of California Latinas, in the state that is home to the nation’s largest Latino population. Latinas in the U.S. face the most significant health disparities when it comes to insurance coverage among women. An average of 37% of nonelderly Latina women are uninsured, compared to 13% of white women. Given this statistic, it should come as no surprise that a 2011 report from the Guttmacher Institute identified Latina women as having the highest unintended birth rate in the country: over double the rate of their white counterparts. Another study from the institute that same year identified California as the state with the second-largest unintended pregnancy rate in the country, behind only Mississippi.

With attention to the challenges that intergenerational, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communications present, Blasi is designing a series of infographics to visually illustrate Latinas’ experiences and perspectives on reproductive health. The data presented will focus on barriers to health care access, dispelling common misconceptions and the intersection of immigration reform and the Affordable Care Act. Blasi will also develop a crowd-sourced platform for Latinas to share their personal reproductive justice stories to be disseminated over social and digital media platforms.

Here's more from the series on Ms.' 2013 Parsons fellows: A Tool to Teach Health Literacy: Paweena Prachanronarong and Young Women United and Mapping ACA Insurance Enrollment: Lauren Slowik and West Virginia FREE.

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A Parting Note from the Ms. Foundation’s Inaugural Fellow

By E. Tammy Kim, Ms. Foundation 2012-2013 Fellow

Like every journalist with the nerve to fancy herself a “writer,” I take more than a few cues from the New Yorker’s Janet Malcolm. In one of her distinctly psychological ruminations, she describes journalists as “connoisseurs of the small, unregarded motions of life,” and journalism as having a “mandate to notice small things.”

These details, the texture of life, are what distinguish thorough, reported stories from the quick write-ups and editorializing that dominate this media moment. But deep storytelling takes a lot of time and money—they are a luxury that few outlets and individuals can afford.

For the past year, I enjoyed the rare, substantial gift of journalistic support from the Ms. Foundation for Women. With its integrated vision of media, grantmaking and policy in the service of women, the foundation enabled me to write in-depth, investigative stories on child care and low-wage work. My research and conversations with affected women across the country have, I hope, informed the organization’s work more generally.

Here are some of the pieces I wrote in the course of my fellowship:

• “The Invisible Workforce: Why Do the People Raising Our Children Earn Poverty Wages?” in The Nation (Aug. 2013), on in-home family child care providers in New Jersey, with an accompanying short video.

• "What Separates Welfare from Work" on Open City (July 2013), on welfare-to-work and child care subsidies in New York, featuring former Ms. Foundation grantee Community Voices Heard.

• "The Fourth Circuit’s NLRB Smackdown" in The American Prospect (June 2013), on recent court decisions further hampering the National Labor Relations Board.

• "What Kind of Work Is Care?" in New Labor Forum (Spring 2013), a book review of Making Care Count and Raising Brooklyn, featuring former Ms. Foundation grantee Domestic Workers United.

• "A Brooklyn Corner: Day laborers who clean for ultra-Orthodox Jewish households are learning about their rights" in The Nation (Apr. 2013), on women day laborers and the informal domestic economy in Brooklyn.

• "Home Is Where the Union Is" in The American Prospect (Dec. 2012), on working conditions for nannies and housecleaners, featuring former Ms. Foundation grantee National Domestic Workers Alliance and its affiliates, including grantee Adhikaar.

• “Onus of Child Support Shouldn’t Be On Moms” in the Albuquerque Journal (Sept. 2012), an op-ed about enforcement requirements and child care subsidies, written in conjunction with former Ms. Foundation grantee OLÉ in New Mexico, also featuring former grantee Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. 

• And keep an eye out for my story examining cuts to child care and kinship care subsidies in Kentucky, forthcoming on Al Jazeera America later this month.

I hope these stories ring true and further our collective work toward economic justice for all. With deep gratitude to the Ms. Foundation and my colleagues, and as I move on to a staff writer position with Al Jazeera America, I look forward to continued partnership and better, deeper storytelling.

The Ms. Foundation’s incoming fellow, Lindsay Rosenthal, will begin next month in her role identifying the best strategies for increasing access to health care services for girls currently in or transitioning from the juvenile justice and foster care systems. 

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A Tool to Teach Health Literacy: Paweena Prachanronarong and Young Women United

This summer, Ms. launched its inaugural fellowship program with New York City’s Parsons The New School for Design, pairing three Parsons MFA design students and graduates with three different Ms. grantees working in reproductive justice. With an eye on serving economically, racially and geographically marginalized women in particular, the partnerships will produce public education campaigns and interactive tools to better equip women and girls in the fight for their right to accessible, comprehensive health care. 

By Contessa Gayles, Ms. Foundation intern and graduate student in journalism at NYU

“I am a woman of color who had a child when I was young,” Paweena Prachanronarong, now 32 years old, tells Ms. “At that time, I was in school, so I had to drop out and had no income . . . I've been there, and if there is a way to help clear obstacles for people, I want to help.” Now, with an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons, Prachanronarong is doing just that, using design and innovative solutions to help young women and girls of color in need.

For her fellowship, Prachanronarong is paired with the Ms. grantee Young Women United. The organization works to improve access to comprehensive sex education and health care, and to advance reproductive justice for young women of color in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where people of color are the majority. Young Women United was one of the leading organizations advocating for the passage of New Mexico HB 300. The bill, which was signed into law this past spring, establishes statewide requirements for public school districts and charter schools to enact policies that provide excused absences to pregnant and parenting students. This gives more students a fighting chance at finishing their high school educations, while simultaneously chipping away at the institutionalized stigmatization of young parents.

Continuing this commitment to youth empowerment, Prachanronarong is designing a tool to teach health literacy to Albuquerque’s young people. This goes beyond knowing how to decipher the label on a prescription bottle; it concerns everything from learning the difference between a school-based clinic and a public health office to patient-physician confidentiality to the local rules about parental consent for reproductive care.

This expanded definition of health literacy is increasingly important, as young people in the U.S. younger than 18 continue to experience poverty at significantly higher rates than adults. They need -- and have the right -- to know how to access and pay for care. And while the information is out there, it is rarely framed or communicated to young people in an accessible way. “The end result will definitely be something fun, like a game,” Prachanronarong explains. “This tool will also educate youth about their rights so that they can advocate for themselves.”

Here's more from the series on Ms.' 2013 Parsons fellows: Mapping ACA Insurance Enrollment: Lauren Slowik and West Virginia FREE

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Mapping ACA Insurance Enrollment: Lauren Slowik and West Virginia FREE

This summer, Ms. launched its inaugural fellowship program with New York City’s Parsons The New School for Design, pairing three Parsons MFA design students and graduates with three different Ms. grantees working in reproductive justice. With an eye on serving economically, racially and geographically marginalized women in particular, the partnerships will produce public education campaigns and interactive tools to better equip women and girls in the fight for their right to accessible, comprehensive health care. 

By Contessa Gayles, Ms. Foundation intern and graduate student in journalism at NYU

“As someone who has had a very personal struggle with my own health, I believe that women should be empowered by their health choices – not just merely have access to the bare minimum of care,” Lauren Slowik, 30, tells Ms.

Slowik’s condition lasted the bulk of her 20s and required three different surgeries. Her multiple health insurance providers constantly tried to find ways to categorize her costly illness as a pre-existing condition in a bid to deny her coverage. Now a graduate from Parsons’ Design and Technology MFA program and a new Adjunct Professor of Interaction Design at Parsons, Slowik is using her skill set to help other women access affordable care.

She is paired with Ms. grantee West Virginia FREE (WV FREE), a Charleston, WV-based reproductive justice organization working to increase access to affordable reproductive health care. Ahead of the Oct. 1 start of the enrollment period for insurance plans through President Obama’s Affordable Care Act health exchanges, Slowik is developing a mobile-friendly, browser-based web map to help direct West Virginians to in-person enrollment assistance locations. The  benefits of the ACA – including the ban on gender-based discrimination in insurance coverage and costs, women’s preventive services and contraception mandates and Medicaid expansion – present an unprecedented opportunity for women, particularly low-income women, to access the comprehensive care they deserve. This is particularly important in West Virginia, where nearly a quarter of women report not visiting a doctor due to costs – one of the highest state rates in the nation.  

Unfortunately, working-class Appalachian communities in the state’s rural locations are being left out of the mainstream ACA outreach. “Federal resources for public education around the Affordable Care Act are being redirected to states and locations with a higher density of people,” WV FREE Education and Outreach Manager Rachel Huff explains. “There is a gaping hole in outreach.” While the mountainous topography and the lack of broadband Internet access that results make face-to-face insurance education and enrollment all the more crucial, Slowik and WV FREE will turn to grassroots organizing and communications to make sure as many women have access to the mapping tool as possible.

Here's more from the series on Ms.' 2013 Parsons fellows: A Tool to Teach Health Literacy: Paweena Prachanronarong and Young Women United.

Return to the Ms. Foundation for Women website