Women's
Summit Housing Action Team Featured on Campus Conversations
∫Starting July 1, 2009 and airing regularly throughout the year, the Housing Action Team of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Women's Summit is featured on Campus Conversations, a production of UNC Charlotte TV. To watch the program online, please visit: Campus Conversations: Affordable Housing
Grant Moves Summit Action Forward
According to Amanda Wilson, Action Team Co-Chair for Violence Against Women, action is happening on this Women’s Summit recommendation: A legal representation program to provide legal help to victims of domestic violence. The Governor’s Crime Commission, through the Violence Against Women Act, has awarded a two-year grant of $70,000. The grant will fund a part-time attorney to assist victims and coordinate pro bono services with local attorneys and law students from the Charlotte School of Law. The program will be located at the United Family Services Victim Assistance Domestic Violence Office. Wilson will supervise the program.
The local grant was part of nearly $21 million awarded to state and local agencies to make communities safer and assist crime victims. The money will help programs that detect and deter gang activity, assist victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, prevent juvenile delinquency and fight drug abuse.
The commission serves as the chief advisory body to the Governor and the Secretary of the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety on crime and justice issues. The commission has 44 members, including heads of statewide criminal justice and human service agencies; representatives from the courts, law enforcement, local government and the General Assembly; and private citizens.
Congratulations to Beverly Purdue, North Carolina's first female governor. She invites your input.
I believe it’is important for citizens to be engaged in their government and to have input. I encourage you to give me feedback and suggestions right now on how best to reshape North Carolina's state government. The only way we are going to change this state is by working together.
Governor Beverly Purdue
Go to her suggestion box at http://www.bevperdue.com/free_details.asp?id=76.
Congratulations to Jennifer Watson Roberts on her second term as Chair of the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners.
On January 9, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. The vote was 247-171. The bill now goes to the Senate where a vote is expected soon. For more information on the Act, go to: Library of Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.02831:
or National Women’s Law Center at http://www.nwlc.org/fairpay/
At the National Women’s Law Center site, you can share your experiences if you have ever been paid less than you were worth.
April 28 Equal Pay Day
Equal Pay Day is Tuesday, April 28, 2009. This date marks the point in the year when a woman must work to earn what a man made the previous year. In recent years the overall gap has changed very little. For more information go to http://www.bpwusa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3586
HOW
IMPROVING WOMEN'S LIVES WOULD IMPROVE THE WHOLE COMMUNITY
A driving force for the Charlotte-Meckenburg Women’s Summit is a study on the economic impact of closing the gender gap in South Carolina. The findings are dramatic. The Women’s Summit is performing a similar analysis for our community. Read the report.
If the gender gap in South Carolina were to close, the
total annual economic impact would be $13.4 billion.
· The total impact on household labor earnings would be $16.9 billion.
This total represents all new household income both directly
due to closing the gender gap as well as all multiplier effects as the
new income ripples through the state economy.
· The total boost to jobs in South Carolina would
be more than 144 thousand positions. These jobs represent all jobs created
solely by increased earning and spending power created by closing the
gender gap.
· The increase in income and sales tax revenues
for South Carolina government would be $1 billion annually. These revenues
represent taxes collected directly from higher female earnings as well
as taxes on the additional economic activity created by the increase in
total earnings.
· Even incremental improvements in gender gaps
would have a substantial positive impact on the state’s economy.
Closing the gender gaps by 10 percent would result in a total impact
on economic output of $1.4 billion annually.
according to a March 31 Simmons School of Management report that surveyed over 500 female managers and executives around the nation. Sixty-one percent of those women participate on boards, with the majority involved in nonprofit organizations; only 11 percent of respondents served on for-profit boards. Read the Report
NEW YORK, N.Y.—Despite the increasing presence of women in leadership positions from Wall Street to the halls of Congress, more than half of American girls say they don't aspire to be leaders, turned off by the conventional conception of leadership as command and control, according to a study released today by Girl Scouts of the USA. Read the Study