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October, 2005

IWPR’s Research News Reporter is distributed monthly to highlight inventive, informative, innovative, and sometimes controversial research relating to women and their families. Each selection includes a short description of the research and either a link to the report itself or a citation. We sometimes include short pieces in their entirety.

In this edition:

• The Status of Women in Illinois: An Overview
• The Women of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast: Multiple Disadvantages and Key Asse ts for Recovery. Part I. Poverty, Race, Gender, and Class
• Pulse: A Study on the Status of Girls and Women in Greater Cincinnati
• The Status of Women in Southwest Pennsylvania
• Report on the Status of Women in Bloomington and Monroe County

1. The Status of Women in Illinois: An Overview

Institute for Women’s Policy Research

Commissioned and published by the Chicago Foundation for Women

September 2005

This new briefing paper with research by Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), presen ts data on women’s status in Illinois in five areas: employment and earnings, social and economic autonomy, reproductive righ ts, health and well-being, and political participation. Although Illinois ranks near the top of the nation (7 th) for reproductive righ ts, and about average for women’s social and economic autonomy (15 th), employment and earnings (19 th), and political participation (22 nd), it is below average for women’s health and well-being (26 th). The report highligh ts some promising and disappointing aspec ts of women’s status in Illinois:

• Illinois is one of only 25 states to offer abortion services without a waiting period.
• African American women in Illinois with a high school diploma earn, on average, $26,500 per year, the same amount earned by white women.
• Women of color held only 9.6 percent of the sea ts in the Illinois state legislature in 2004.
• Illinois has one of the highest mortality rates from breast cancer of all states.
• Illinois ranks in the bottom third of all states for the wage ratio between white, Native American, and Hispanic women and white men.

The briefing paper also recommends policies to improve women’s status and increase their well-being in Illinois. Some of these policies include formulating policies and practices that encourage women to assume leadership positions, and establishing living wage laws.

Full report is available at

http://www.cfw.org/pages/pdf/StatusofWomeninIllinoisReport.pdf

2. The Women of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast: Multiple Disadvantages and Key Asse ts for Recovery. Part I. Poverty, Race, and Gender and Class

Barbara Gault, Heidi Hartmann, Avis Jones-DeWeever, Misha Werschkul, and Erica Williams

Institute for Women’s Policy Research

September 2005

Women of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region are especially hard-hit by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as they are more likely than men to be in poverty, and to head single-parent families, according to a new study released today by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

The Women of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast: Multiple Disadvantages and Key Asse ts for Recovery, Part I. Poverty, Race, Gender and Class uses U.S. Census Bureau data to provide a detailed portrait of poverty among women and people of color in the city of New Orleans and the metropolitan areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas hardest hit by the hurricanes. The paper also presen ts data on poverty in cities and metropolitan areas to which many hurricane victims have moved.

Among the paper’s findings are:

• The prevalence of female-headed families was high in all regions affected by the hurricanes. For example, in the city of New Orleans 56% of all families with related children under 18 were headed by women.
• Four in ten female-headed families living in the city of New Orleans and the New Orleans metropolitan areas were poor, and poverty rates among these families are also very high in Beaumont-Port Arthur (34.7%) and Biloxi-Gulfport-Pascagoula (28.6%).

The Briefing Paper offers policy recommendations for rebuilding and for poverty alleviation, including honoring local wage provisions, providing access to child care, ensuring women’s full participation in the planning process, and beginning a new national dialogue on poverty that includes a full consideration of gender and race dynamics.

Full briefing paper is available at: http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/NewOrleans_Part1.pdf

3. Pulse: A Study on the Status of Girls and Women in Greater Cincinnati

The Women’s Fund of The Greater Cincinnati Foundation

2005

This report, commissioned by the Women’s Fund of the The Greater Cincinnati Foundation, focuses on the eight-country area comprising Greater Cincinnati (Hamilton, Butler, Warren, and Clermont counties in Ohio; Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties in Kentucky; and, Dearborn County, Indiana) and examines six key indicators of women’s status: education and job training, economic security, health status, personal safety, power and leadership, and the experience of girls. Much of the data included in the report came from state and federal sources, but some information was collected locally. Key findings include:

• Women and girls in Greater Cincinnati have higher high school graduation, college attendance rates, and higher proficiency scores than their state-wide counterpar ts in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.
• Women’s labor force participation in Greater Cincinnati, ranging from 59 percent to 65 percent, exceeds the national rate, making women a crucial component in the local economy. However, the disparity between women’s and men’s wages in Greater Cincinnati is larger than for the nation as a whole.
• Eighty five percent of women are covered by some type of health insurance, but class and race disparities continue to persist.
• Women in every county do have access to at least one violence prevention program, but insufficient data impedes knowledge of how many women in the area are crime victims.

The Women’s Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation hopes the report may educate policy makers and inform the community as to the challenges facing women and girls in the region and ignite a dialogue as to how to best confront such challenges.

Full report is available at: http://www.greatercincinnatifdn.org/page24762.cfm

4. The Status of women in Southwest Pennsylvania

Patricia M. Ulbrich, Ph.D., Erica Laney Morrison, Kristin DeLuca

Regional Women’s Initiative at Chatham College and

Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania

August 2005

This new study builds on the The Status of Women in Pennsylvania report compiled by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in 1998 and provides information on status of women in the eleven counties of southwest Pennsylvania (SWPA) in the areas of employment and economic status, political representation, social and economic autonomy, reproductive righ ts, and health and well-being. The data were drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau and other existing state and regional sources and the study adapted methodology used in The Status of Women in the States report series by IWPR. Some of the findings are:

• All counties in the region have a relatively large female: male wage gap (women earn between 63 percent and 71 percent of what men earn depending on the county) larger than the statewide gap (women earn 72 percent of what men earn).
• In six of the 11 counties, the percentage of women living in poverty is greater (13.7 percent) than the average level of poverty (12.2 percent) in the state and in nine of the counties, the proportion of women in managerial and professional occupations is below the state average of 33.5 percent.
• Pennsylvania ranks 47 th in the nation in women’s political participation and representation. Only 22 percent of county commissioners in the South-west region are women. Furthermore, five counties in the region do not have female commissioners and only two counties have active women’s commissions.
• Although all 11 counties have at least one clinic to provide family planning and reproductive health services, only one county, Allegheny, has abortion providers.
• According to the report, the teen birth rates in every county in Southwest Pennsylvania are below the state rate of 3.6 percent. There are rape crisis and domestic violence services in every county of the region.

Recommendations include increasing women’s political participation and representation, expanding health and social services for women, especially in rural areas, increasing the number of women-owned businesses, and increasing economic development programs that target women’s status.

To receive a copy of this report, please email or call Kristen DeLuca (412-365-2987) at the Pennsylvania Center for Women, Politics, and Public Policy. 

5. Report on the Status of Women in Bloomington and Monroe County

City of Bloomington Commission on the Status of Women: Economics, Employment, and the Workplace, City of Bloomington Community and Family Resources Department

March 2005

This report is the first in the series of five topical repor ts on the status of women in Bloomington and Monroe County, Indiana being produced by the Bloomington Commission on the Status of Women. The report draws on data from U.S. Census Bureau (2000) and IWPR’s Status of Women in the States repor ts, and local sources.

This report on Economics, employment, and the workplace features some key findings such as:

• In terms of total earnings, a gender gap exis ts in Bloomington and Monroe county, with women getting slightly less than 40 percent of total earnings among full-time employees.
• In Bloomington, the percent of women earning who fall within the highest earning quartile (more than $75,000) is only 5 percent compared to 14 percent of men. The majority of working women (85 percent) are in the bottom quartiles of the income scale compared to 71 percent working men who fall in this category.
• Women represent only 43 percent of individuals in management, business, and financial operations, and only about 20 percent of professionals in computer and mathematical occupations.

The city of Bloomington Commission the Status of Women is currently partnering with the Diversity Committee of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce to conduct a review of women friendly practices among Bloomington employers.

Full text of the report is available at http://bloomington.in.gov/egov/docs/1108486984857.htm

Please refer to IWPR’s Assessing the Status of Women at the County Level: A Manual for Researchers and Advocates as a resource for research on status of women in your region.

This edition of IWPR’s Research News Reporter was prepared by Inku Subedi and Jessica Koski.