Dear Mr. Mayor:
Congratulations on your election and inauguration. We all hope for and expect great things from you and your administration!
“One city” – the slogan from your campaign and your inaugural address – is a great unifying and organizing principle for the District. Our fates are tied together, no matter what part of the city we live in, what we look like, how we make a living and who we call family.
As we work together toward your vision of coming together as one city, I urge, at the same time, that we not lose sight of the diverse parts that make up our one city, especially women and girls.
To be sure, many women and girls in our community are doing well and sharing in the overall prosperity of a region that has – so far – been spared some of the worst effects of the recession. But our recent report 2010 Portrait of Women & Girls in the Washington Metropolitan Area also revealed deep challenges facing women and girls in the District (and the region), including:
- Nearly 62,000 women and girls in DC lived in poverty in 2008-2009 (35 percent of all of the women and girls in poverty in the region), compared to nearly 43,000 men and boys (a 44 percent difference).
- The poverty rate for women and girls in DC was nearly 21 percent in 2008-2009 (the highest in the region), compared to 16 percent for men. What’s more, the District had exceptionally high poverty rates (26 percent) for African-American women and girls.
- Women-headed families with children in DC had median family income of $29,900 in 2008, the lowest in the region. This contrasts sharply with the $53,634 estimated that an adult with one infant and one pre-school child needs to achieve minimum self-sufficiency.
- Too many DC women (35 percent in 2008) have no education beyond a high school diploma.
- African-American women in DC had an unemployment rate of 12 percent in 2008, compared to 2.8 percent for white women and 5.6 percent for Latinas.
We hope you will call on us at The Women’s Foundation to help you and your team address these and other challenges facing our city’s women and girls.
Gwen Rubinstein is a program officer at Washington Area Women’s Foundation.
