As we shut Ladies’s Historical past Month, we have fun the various highly effective girls who’ve contributed to our Nation, regardless of the obstacles that 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 appeared 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 handle discrimination and disparities and advance gender fairness and equality in our nation’s well being and human providers applications.
Ladies 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:
- Ladies 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 shade, and ladies with disabilities. Latinas, who face the biggest wage hole, should work into December of the next yr to earn a non-Latino white man’s revenue.
- The U.S. has the best maternal mortality fee amongst high-income international locations, although most are preventable. Black girls and Native American girls face greater danger of affected by maternal deaths. Progressive actions to enhance maternal well being and start outcomes for pregnant and postpartum girls are essential to eradicate these disparities.
- Transgender girls report greater charges of violent victimization than cisgender girls.
I be part of President Biden in his name issued in his Proclamation on Ladies’s Historical past Month, 2024, “could all of us proceed working to construct a world worthy of the desires and targets of all girls and ladies.”
OCR enforces a variety of federal privateness legal guidelines and antidiscrimination legal guidelines that shield 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.
- 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 admire 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, reasonably priced, and higher for all. Their arduous work day by day evokes me to do extra.
Melanie
