Today, the Chicago Foundation for Women released its analysis of how the economic stimulus package will impact women.

It’s findings?  Some of the big wins for women are:

• To reduce job cuts for educators and teachers, nearly $45 billion was allocated to the Department of Education.
• Medicaid, which supports the health of more than 20 million women, will receive $87 billion.
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families received $1.1 billion, as well as $20 billion to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamps).
• Community child care got $2 billion and child support enforcement received $1 billion, both of which help single mothers thrive.

More of their analysis can be found here.

The Chicago Foundation for Women conducted this analysis through its role as part of the Women’s Economic Security Collaborative, which Washington Area Women’s Foundation is also proud to be a part of.  The Collaborative’s goal is to find and implement effective strategies to raise awareness about policies impacting women’s financial independence.

Chicago’s analysis today is a great start to this work and we look forward to our work with the Collaborative to further encourage examinations of national policies and practices through a gender lens.

Because we know, as do all other women’s funds throughout the world, that when you see policies through the eyes of women, you envision better policies–and end results–for everyone.

Lisa Kays is The Women’s Foundation’s Director of Communications.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 10:37 am and is filed under Blog, Economic Security, Economy, Health, Women. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.