Women in Missouri have not seen significant advancements towards equality in the past few years, according to research released Thursday during a web-based press conference held by The Women’s Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Kansas City.
Emily Johnson, chief operating officer and associate director of the MU Institute of Public Policy, was one of two speakers at the conference. Johnson highlighted the ways in which women are disadvantaged in Missouri.
“Even though women compose approximately 51 percent of the state’s population, only 22.3 percent of the 2017 general assembly seats are held by women, down from 25 percent in 2015,” Johnson said at the press conference. “Only 24 percent of state court judges are women, only 19 percent of all state prosecutors are women, and only two sheriffs in the state of Missouri are women.”
The issues women face are due to a number of factors; the research highlighted problems such as poverty, lack of education, unemployment, lack of healthcare and pay inequality.
“Women often face persistent gender disparities in several crucial aspects of their daily lives,” Johnson said. “Issues in one area are not separated from issues in another area. In fact, struggles across multiple areas can compound and escalate difficulties for women.”
Wendy Doyle, president and CEO of the Women’s Foundation, focused on how the foundation’s goal is to find a way to turn these findings into public policy that can be used to improve the lives of women in Missouri.
“First and foremost, we want to continue to build awareness of the issues and of what the findings are telling us,” Doyle said. “Our objective for the Women’s Foundation is to really benchmark and invest in this research to have the baseline to start to monitor our programs moving forward for Missouri.”
The Women’s Foundation plans on accomplishing this by releasing updated status reports every few years and developing partnerships and policy solutions. In the past year, the foundation has been able to establish programs and work with former governor Jay Nixon to close the wage gap.
“[On] April 10, 2016, Governor Nixon called for a directive and asked the office of administration to take those best-practice guidelines [outlined in Executive Order No. 15-09] and apply them to the state workforce,” Doyle said. “So we couldn’t be more pleased for the progress we made for Missouri in that. We hope to continue [that progress] under the new administration.”
In addition to working to close the wage gap, the Women’s Foundation has also been able to implement multiple programs to better the lives of women.
According to Doyle, when it comes to civic leadership among women in Missouri “we’re not moving forward, we’re actually moving backward.” The foundation has worked to remedy this by instating the Appointments Project, which works to get women into leadership positions and encourages them to share their voice.
The foundation is also working to promote entrepreneurship and to help women gain paid family medical leave.
“We want to develop policy solutions and really develop partnerships in Missouri and share this information,” Johnson said, “so that we can start to move forward as a state and see some results for women and their families.”
_Edited by Madi McVan | mmcvan@themaneater.com_
