As we shut Girls’s Historical past Month, we rejoice the numerous highly effective girls who’ve contributed to our Nation, regardless of the boundaries which will exist and those they needed to overcome. This month has been particularly significant as I’ve had robust girls round me my entire life. I used to be raised by a single mom and regarded as much as my older sister as she trailblazed in her authorized profession in public curiosity. I’m deeply grateful to the numerous feminine position fashions who opened a path for me and plenty of others. As Vice President Kamala Harris says, “First however not the final” and I hope to do the identical for the numerous girls who will come after me.
On the U.S. Division of Well being & Human Providers’ (HHS) Workplace for Civil Rights (OCR), we mirror on the work forward of us to deal with discrimination and disparities and advance gender fairness and equality in our nation’s well being and human companies applications.
Girls make up half of the U.S. inhabitants. From suffragists and abolitionists, to our first feminine Vice President, our nation has skilled centuries of progress in direction of gender equality. But, challenges and inequalities persist:
- Girls proceed to earn lower than their male counterparts. Whereas Equal Pay Day on March 12, 2024 marks how far right into a subsequent yr girls, on common, should work to earn a person’s revenue from the earlier yr, pay disparities are extra pronounced for Black girls, girls of colour, and ladies with disabilities. Latinas, who face the most important wage hole, should work into December of the next yr to earn a non-Latino white man’s revenue.
- The U.S. has the very best maternal mortality fee amongst high-income international locations, although most are preventable. Black girls and Native American girls face increased danger of affected by maternal deaths. Modern actions to enhance maternal well being and beginning outcomes for pregnant and postpartum girls are essential to eradicate these disparities.
- Transgender girls report increased charges of violent victimization than cisgender girls.
I be part of President Biden in his name issued in his Proclamation on Girls’s Historical past Month, 2024, “might all of us proceed working to construct a world worthy of the desires and objectives of all girls and ladies.”
OCR enforces a spread of federal privateness legal guidelines and antidiscrimination legal guidelines that defend affected person privateness, together with those that want entry to care, girls who’re pregnant, girls with disabilities, or girls who establish as LGBTQI+.
As a part of my workplace’s work on nondiscrimination and dedication to justice, a few of OCR’s current efforts embody:
OCR can be a various workforce and I need to take a second to acknowledge a few of its girls leaders:
- Jenny Ma serves as OCR’s Principal Deputy Director.
- Genevieve Kelly is serving because the Performing Chief of Employees.
- Robinsue Frohboese is the Deputy Director of Strategic Planning.
- Nearly all of OCR’s eight Areas nationwide are led by girls (six):
- Jamie Rahn Ballay, Regional Supervisor, Mid-Atlantic Area
- Linda Colón, Regional Supervisor, Japanese & Caribbean Area
- Andrea Oliver, Regional Supervisor, Rocky Mountain Area
- Susan Rhodes, Regional Supervisor, New England Area
- Marisa Smith, Regional Supervisor, Southwest Area
- Barbara Stampul, Regional Supervisor, Southeast Area
I so respect the numerous contributions of the ladies that work at OCR to advance privateness and civil rights, and the numerous girls throughout the nation who work to make well being care extra accessible, inexpensive, and higher for all. Their arduous work day by day conjures up me to do extra.
Melanie