Upcoming Event: Mothers Behind Bars

On Monday, November 8th, join two Ms. Foundation grantees for an important online conversation about how federal and state correctional laws can better meet the needs of pregnant and parenting women behind bars.

The Rebecca Project for Human Rights and the National Women's Law Center have joined forces to produce an original report called Mothers Behind Bars, which explores the dangerous practice of shackling women during childbirth and other important issues affecting pregnant and parenting women behind bars — the vast majority of whom, the report points out, are non-violent, first-time offenders. The report's authors, Jill Morrison of NWLC and Malika Saada Saar, Executive Director of the Rebecca Project, conducted state-by-state analysis of policies impacting incarcerated women, including prenatal care and family-based drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration; they will discuss their findings and highlight a few much needed solutions during this important online event.

With more women behind bars today than at any other time in our nation's history, and with more than two-thirds of them identifying as mothers, this is a conversation whose time has come. Don't miss it.

WHAT: Mothers Behind Bars webinar
WHEN: Monday, November 8, 2010 at 1:00 pm Easter
HOW: For more information and to RSVP, please visit the event's registration page.

Vote Tuesday November 2, 2010 - Find Your Polling Place Here

Update: Today, Tuesday November 2 is the day.

Exercise your rights and vote this Tuesday, November 2. The gadget below -- produced by the Voting Information Project, a partnership of NOI, Google, the Pew Center on the States and local election officials -- will identify your polling place.

Upcoming Event: Impact of Child Care Subsidies on Women of Color

Concerned about the state of child care assistance available to low-income and working class families in these troubled times? Then you may want to take some time tomorrow (Tuesday, November 2nd) to attend an important event hosted by Ms. Foundation grantee the Women of Color Policy Network, here in New York City.

"Carrying the Load: The Impact of Child Care Subsidy Policies on the Economic Security of Women of Color," will feature a roundtable discussion of the many challenges working and low-income families with young children face in accessing safe, quality, affordable child care. The panel will examine the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on child care subsidy funding and availability; highlight the importance of child care subsidies for working, low-income communities; and strategize policy solutions to enhance child care subsidy experiences for women of color and their families.

Panelists include: Gina Adams, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute; J. Lee Kreader, PhD, Director of Research Connections, National Center for Children in Poverty; Benita Miller, Executive Director, Brooklyn Young Mother’s Collective; and Chanelle Pearson, Research Associate, Women of Color Policy Network, NYU Wagner. The discussion will be moderated by Hannah Matthews, Senior Policy Analyst at CLASP.

The event will take place on Tuesday, November 2, 2010, from 6:30 - 8:30 PM in the Rudin Family Room (2nd Floor) of The Puck Building: 295 Lafayette Street, New York, NY.

For more information and to RSVP, please visit: http://wagner.nyu.edu/wocpn/news/calendar.php#child.

Please also note that next Tuesday's roundtable will be followed by a national webinar on child care subsidies in the states, to be held on Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 3:00 PM (EST).

Read how our grantee, Parent Voices, is fighting for affordable child care in California.

What Does the Minimum Wage Have to do With Economic Recovery?

For those looking for a surefire way to stimulate our national economy, Ms. Foundation grantee Let Justice Roll (LJR) has a tried and true solution to suggest: raise the minimum wage.

What do wages have to do with it? As the forces behind the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign point out, consumer spending makes up about 70% of the US economy. But with consumer confidence flagging, and many workers finding that they cannot make ends meet on minimum wage salaries, individuals and families alike feel less willing and/or able to inject into the economy the money that is needed to end this recession once and for all. Boosting minimum wage would allow millions of workers to funnel their increased raises back into the economy by purchasing necessities like food, fuel, health care and the other basics of life.

The concept is not a new one; it's the same approach President Franklin D. Roosevelt took to pulling our country out of the Great Depression nearly 80 years ago. Roosevelt understood that if there was no limit to how little businesses could pay their workers, the country simply could not recover its economic vitality; people had to be guaranteed a certain standard of pay to ensure that money could indeed flow back into the economy through consumer purchases. He considered creating a minimum wage "essential to economic recovery," noting that “the increase of national purchasing power [is] an underlying necessity of the day.” Much the same could be said of the situation we find ourselves in today.

Most Americans now seem to understand this intuitively: the 2010 American Values Survey shows that two out of three Americans (67%) agree that the minimum wage should be raised from $7.25 to $10 per hour. Our present minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is actually worth less, when adjusted for inflation, than an individual working a minimum wage job would have earned more than 50 years ago. Raising the minimum wage to $10 today would finally bring worker compensation within striking distance of earning levels in 1968, when minimum wage reached its (since unmatched) peak -- and would have a particularly profound impact on women (and their families), who make up 60 percent of the low-wage workforce.

As Ms. Foundation Executive VP and COO Susan Wefald and her co-authors Holly Sklar (one of the forces behind the LJR Living Wage Campaign) and Laryssa Mykyta noted in their 2001 book, Raise the Floor, "a job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it." With more and more working-class Americans finding themselves out of luck even if they aren't out of work, now is the time to push for a minimum wage that actually pays workers enough to live on.

Sign on to LJR's petition to raise the minimum wage. Believe us: the economy will thank you for it.

A Tribute to Sara K. Gould: Katie Grover

Dear Sara:

I've put this off a bit as I so quickly get choked up just thinking about writing this.

First there is the story of your professional trajectory. I remember being at an event twenty-some years ago when Marie introduced you as "the" authority on economic development. So from the very beginning, I respected what you contributed to a discussion. Your expertise in your field of study and your evident empathy and compassion for the lives of women and their families, who are impacted by unjust societal norms and structural policies, have always been impressive. As you became more and more entrenched at the Ms. Foundation, you got to know and understand every part of it.

Becoming the COO, you were a trusted manager and your leadership charted a course for the Foundation to pursue "best practices" around all of its internal operations and to project those best practices beyond our own policies and serve to inspire our grantees and colleagues to follow suit. Then as CEO, you moved to play a more external role, projecting the work of the Foundation, and taking it on the road. Your leadership has been marked by your pursuit of excellence; in your work with the Foundation staff, in our work with grantees, in our ability to collaborate and motivate partners to join our work (or us to join theirs), and in our drive to impact policy on behalf of women, especially women at the intersection of race, class, and gender.

Your great good judgment and personal style have placed the Ms. Foundation at the center of much of the work being done on social justice for women in this country. And your personal warmth, vision, and authenticity have made you a beloved figure in this field.

Now we get to the hard part. Anyone who has been in your orbit, or that of the Foundation's, could have said what I just did. But I, as the immediate past Board Chair, who served in that capacity for five years and as a board member for four years before that, have had the privilege and profound good fortune to have worked very closely with you over a significant period of time.

You've led the Ms. Foundation through many challenges and triumphs over those years. I watched you grow and push yourself to be a better leader. And I am humbled by the knowledge of how much I learned working with you. While I am proud to have been a partner in such a leadership team, I am even prouder to admit that it was not without its difficult moments; moments that we always managed to negotiate with respect, trust, an interest in understanding all sides of an issue, and a deep commitment to moving forward in the best possible way for the Foundation and the work that we feel so strongly about.

And since all of that time was also full with more than its share of laughter (think about the taxi ride at a conference in Salzburg) a lovely friendship was born. We've done what women have done for millennia: supported each other in our work, in our roles as wives, mothers, and daughters, and in our aspirations. I treasure that. And make no mistake...I'm counting on it going forward too!!! So thanks, for all you have given me and all you have made happen in your work at the Ms. Foundation.

Lots of Love and Best Wishes - Katie

Katie Grover, Immediate past Chair of the Board of Trustees

Read all the tributes to Sara K. Gould, and post one of your own.

A Tribute to Sara K. Gould: Kavita N. Ramdas

Well done!

Dearest Sara,

I cannot tell you how much your support and example and leadership have meant to me over the years. We have been friends since I first came to visit you as a Program Associate in 1988, when you were running the Economic Development Institute at the Ms. Foundation. I remember watching the terrible events of Tiananmen Square together in Atlanta at the Institute.

I remember joining the Ms. Collaborative on Women's Economic Development and Self Employment and meeting friends like Peggy Clark and Lisa Mensah. I remember you and me talking about having a baby and your funny antics (headstands, anyone!?). In 1995, you invited me to join the Ms. Foundation delegation to the Beijing Conference -- what a life changing experience and one that took me to the life work that I have pursued for 14 years at the Global Fund for Women.

I watched you lead as a partner and ally of Marie's and I watched you step into the role of CEO with such grace and confidence after Marie stepped down. You never failed to remember that the women you served were the ones we had visited together in public housing, on Lakota reservations, and poor communities in the Mississippi Delta. You built a strong and powerful foundation that was fierce in its pursuit of justice for women in the United States. You stepped in after Katrina devastated lives and made a real difference.

You created a vision and a brand for Ms. that will live on in a million ways. I hope you know how much you have done -- we do!

I have loved every minute of our friendship and as I began to think about my transition -- there you were again to help me review with wisdom and clarity what needed to be done -- what the important pieces of the process required, and how to keep myself together through it all.

You have been sister, ally and dear friend for so many years, I know it will never stop. Saying goodbye to something we love, even when we know we are ready to do so, is never easy -- so here is a poem by Palestinian American poet Naomi Shibab Nye that has helped me through it. It is my gift to you.

Adios

It is a good word, rolling off the tongue
no matter what language you were born with.
Use it. Learn where it begins,
the small alphabet of departure,
how long it takes to think of it,
then say it, then be heard.

Marry it. More than any golden ring
it shines, it shines.
Wear it on every finger
till your hands dance,
touching everything easily,
letting everything, easily, go.

Strap it to your back like wings.
Or a kite tail. The stream of air behind a jet.
If you are known for anything,
let it be the way you rise out of sight
when your work is finished.

Think of things that linger: leaves,
cartons and napkins, the damp smell of mold.

Think of things that disappear.

Think of what you love best,
what brings tears into your eyes.
Something that said adios to you
before you knew what it meant
or how long it was for.

Explain little, the word explains itself.
Later perhaps. Lessons following lessons,
like silence following sound.

– Naomi Shibab Nye

Kavita N. Ramdas, Senior Advisor (President and CEO 1996-2010), Global Fund for Women

Read all the tributes to Sara K. Gould, and post one of your own.

Gender Pay Gap Takes on Added Significance in Tough Economic Times

Originally posted on The Hill Blog

By Sara K. Gould and Susan Wefald

While the gender wage gap has been a fact of life in America for decades, the issue rarely rises to the forefront in public policy debates – much less elections. That may be changing. As the economy has tumbled and more women have become the primary or sole breadwinners for their families, pay inequity may finally be getting the attention it deserves.

Last week’s White House report on Jobs and Economic Security for America’s Women featured the gender wage gap as a front and center issue. And a recent national poll of more than 1,000 adults conducted for our organization and the Center for Community Change by Lake Research Partners found that people rank equal pay for men and women as one of the most important issues for them personally and for improving the economy as a whole.

Read more »