White House Releases Groundbreaking Report on Status of Women

by Caroline Dobuzinskis

This spring, the White House released data on the status of women in the United States for the first time since 1963 when Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the Commission on the Status of Women.

This year’s White House report is directed to policymakers, journalists, and researchers and charts the progress of women in the United States over time. The report’s findings point to advancements for women in education, but lingering inequalities in income, supports for working women, and positions of political power.

Barbara Gault, Ph.D., IWPR Executive Director, spoke at an event held at the Center for American Progress (CAP) to discuss the report with a group of noted researchers and support people from the Administration: Preet Basal, Senior Policy Director with the Office of Management and Budget; Rebecca Blank, Acting Deputy Secretary with the Department of Commerce; Heather Boushey, Senior Economist with CAP; Ana Harvey, Director of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership; Avis Jones-DeWeever, Executive Director of the National Council of Negro Women; Lynn Rosenthal, Advisor to the White House on Violence Against Women; and Christina Tchen, Executive Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls.

In a March 4 episode of the nationally broadcast television program, “To The Contrary,” Gault commented on the findings of the report, particularly the comparative standing of women in the United States in an international context.“The U.S. is quite different from other developed nations, its counterparts in the
industrialized world, in that we do not have paid parental leave policies,” said Gault. “Some of the basic, very fundamental things that working women need to succeed in the economy, in the world of work, we just don’t have.”