3-12-09, 10:45 am
Women's equality and health organizations celebrated the creation of a new White House Council on Women and Girls this week. With an executive order, President Obama created the office to prompt 'every government agency' to address 'the challenges confronted by women of all ages,' a White House press statement explained.
National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy welcomed the president's action. 'It was a pleasure for me to be at the White House to hear the president make this commitment to supporting women and girls in such strong and unequivocal terms,' she announced in a press statement. 'It was a heartening moment for those of us who have worked so hard for this day.'
“We applaud President Obama for the creation of this council and for his leadership on behalf of women and girls across the country,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “In these tough economic times, American women and their families are struggling with a wide range of issues, not the least of which is access to quality, affordable health care.'
President Obama announced the executive order with a touching recollection of his own mother and grandmother. 'I saw my mother put herself through school and follow her passion for helping others. But I also saw how she struggled to raise me and my sister on her own, worrying about how she'd pay the bills and educate herself and provide for us,' he said. The president continued, 'I saw my grandmother work her way up to become one of the first women bank vice presidents in the state of Hawaii, but I also saw how she hit a glass ceiling – how men no more qualified than she was kept moving up the corporate ladder ahead of her.'
In addition to this new White House office, President Obama's commitment to improving the lives of working women and their families has so far been expressed in some of first major initiatives his administration has helped pass into law.
For example, an expanded S-CHIP will help low-income families provide affordable health care coverage to about four million new children. The president also signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, widely regarded as a major first step towards reducing gender-based pay inequities. Both of these bills had either been vetoed by George W. Bush or blocked by Republicans in the previous Congress.
In addition to this, the administration consciously constructed the economic recovery package to inject a sizeable amount of federal dollars into programs and industries whose beneficiaries and workforces are made up disproportionately by women. The authors of the economic stimulus package understood that a focus on 'shovel-ready' projects as targets for stimulus money tended to conjure up an image of using of federal funds primarily to create construction jobs, an industry dominated by men.
When the economic stimulus package was put together in January, however, the Obama Transition Team stressed that this gender-biased view of a stimulus package would be insufficient for working families, especially those headed by women.
Christina Romer, a Transition Team economic advisor and now chair of the president's economic council, addressed that problem and helped give the recovery package a broader focus. 'I've been one of the strong proponents of the balance of the program, that it does have the investments in education and health care. It does have the state fiscal relief. It does have the middle class tax cuts,' she explained.
'All of those kind of pieces are creating jobs in some of the sectors like health care, education and retail trade where women are a disproportionately large fraction,' Romer argued back in January.
The economic stimulus package provided over $100 billion to help boost the country's education system and billions for the health care sector. One particular emphasis that President Obama has long identified as personally important is early childhood education. The stimulus package will help tens of thousands of new low-income working families put their children in Head Start and other early childhood education programs that will expose them basic language, reading, and math skills.
Every working mother (and father) knows that having a safe place to put their child outside of the home is an ongoing struggle and a valuable resource for arranging work schedules.
Building on these accomplishments, the White House council will work with other government agencies and departments to offer new initiatives that will improve women’s economic security, promote a balance between work and family, prevent violence against women and improve women’s health care.
President Obama tapped Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett and Director of Public Liaison Tina Tchen to head the council.
