As we shut Girls’s Historical past Month, we have a good time the various highly effective girls who’ve contributed to our Nation, regardless of the limitations which will exist and those they needed to overcome. This month has been particularly significant as I’ve had robust girls round me my complete 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 various feminine function fashions who opened a path for me and lots of others. As Vice President Kamala Harris says, “First however not the final” and I hope to do the identical for the various 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 earnings from the earlier yr, pay disparities are extra pronounced for Black girls, girls of colour, and girls with disabilities. Latinas, who face the most important wage hole, should work into December of the following yr to earn a non-Latino white man’s earnings.
- 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 larger danger of affected by maternal deaths. Modern actions to enhance maternal well being and beginning outcomes for pregnant and postpartum girls are essential to get rid of these disparities.
- Transgender girls report larger charges of violent victimization than cisgender girls.
I be a 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 goals 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 determine as LGBTQI+.
As a part of my workplace’s work on nondiscrimination and dedication to justice, a few of OCR’s latest efforts embody:
OCR can also be a various workforce and I wish 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 Workers.
- Robinsue Frohboese is the Deputy Director of Strategic Planning.
- The vast majority of OCR’s eight Areas nationwide are led by girls (six):
- Jamie Rahn Ballay, Regional Supervisor, Mid-Atlantic Area
- Linda Colón, Regional Supervisor, Jap & 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 recognize the various contributions of the ladies that work at OCR to advance privateness and civil rights, and the various girls throughout the nation who work to make well being care extra accessible, inexpensive, and higher for all. Their onerous work every single day conjures up me to do extra.
Melanie
