Northwest Valley Branch

 

Northwest Valley Branch

Public Policy

         e Currents, February, 2012, page 6

                                                                                    2011: The Year of Reproductive Rights Rollbacks 

States enacted 80 laws restricting access to reproductive health care in 2011, more than three times as many as in 2010, according to research by the Guttmacher Institute. This increase is due in part to the 2010 elections, which swept many anti-reproductive choice candidates into office. There are now 15 state governments in which both the governor and legislatures oppose abortion rights, up from 10 in 2010. These restrictive laws include mandatory waiting periods, limited access to medication abortion, and new restrictions on later term abortions. Additionally, six states enacted deep cuts to family planning budgets, and five states have also moved to restrict eligibility for providers that have anything to do with abortion.

AAUW supports the right of every woman to safe, accessible, affordable, and comprehensive family planning and reproductive health services. AAUW trusts that every woman has the ability to make her own informed choices regarding her reproductive life within the dictates of her own moral and religious beliefs. Further, AAUW believes that these deeply personal decisions should be made without government interference.

                    Unemployment Rate Drops; Men Hired in More New Jobs than Women

The Department of Labor announced Friday that employers added 200,000 jobs in December, pushing the unemployment rate down to 8.5 percent. Yet deeper analysis showed a troubling trend – men got nearly 2 out of 3 new jobs created last year. Nearly 1.28 million men gained jobs in the 12 months that ended in November, compared with 600,000 women. This gain was primarily in retail, a field traditionally dominated by women, with retailers hiring 216,900 men compared to about 9,000 women.

Faced with a still-bleak job market, women are dropping out of the labor force in large numbers, many to pursue graduate and professional education. The New York Times reports that among all age groups, unemployed women are 35 percent more likely to leave the workforce than are unemployed men. Both men and women are entering higher education programs at higher rates than in the past. However, in the last two years, the number of women in school age 18 to 24 rose by 130,000 while the number of men age 18-24 rose by only 53,000.

AAUW believes that to promote economic recovery, the president and Congress must focus on creating jobs, training our workers, and ensuring those jobs are good ones — the kind that pay equitably and provide economic security. AAUW strongly believes that access to high-wage, high-skill jobs should be a right for women and girls from diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, age, and disability backgrounds and that access includes training for nontraditional jobs. Additionally, any job creation legislation must promote equal pay — women who work full time earn about 77 cents on average for every dollar men earn.

                                       The Federal Judges Emergency Affects women

Our civil and constitutional rights and individual liberties are protected by a strong and effective judiciary. So now is a perfect time to focus on a threat to the hard-won victories of the women’s and civil rights movements: the "judicial emergency" created by vacancies in courtrooms nationwide.  Ask your senators to help protect our freedoms by moving forward with judicial confirmations! Not only can the federal courts be a shield for civil rights laws like Title IX and the Equal Pay Act, they’re often the last, best hope for women who have experienced discrimination in education, employment, health care and in other aspects of their lives. A strong judiciary is critical to American women. Yet the Senate drags its heels.Furthermore, the diversity of the courts is being stunted by the slow confirmation process. In recent years, more of the individuals nominated to the federal bench have been women or minorities than in the past. But in spite of the many qualified women and minorities who have been nominated to the bench, the judicial vacancy rate is nearly 11 percent, with 92 vacancies on Federal courts around the country.