Meghan Kissell, Senior Director of Policy and Member Advocacy at the American Association of University Women (AAUW), Washington D.C.
Women’s Equality Day 2024 (WED2024) will be celebrated in Garrett County this year on Monday, August 26, 6:30 PM-8:30 PM, at Garrett College’s Career Technology & Training Center, in Accident, MD. The event’s theme is Women’s Equity in Education. It is co-sponsored by a coalition of local women’s organizations including AAUW-Garrett Branch, Garrett County Commission for Women, The Dove Center, GFWC Civic Club of Oakland, Garrett County Democratic Women, and NSDAR Youghiogheny Glades Chapter. These local organizations will be tabling at the event to offer attendees information about their programs, resources, and opportunities to support the local community.
The event is free and open to anyone interested in the topic. Light refreshments and beverages will be served.
To address the issue of Women’s Equity in Education, the event will focus on the history, content, and status of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance including local school districts, colleges and universities, for-profit schools, career and technical education agencies, libraries, and museums. Title IX has been instrumental in ensuring gender equality in educational institutions across the United States, impacting a broad range of policies and practices from admissions to athletics. However, recent political conversations and a Supreme Court ruling have placed the expansion of Title IX protections into a state of uncertainty.
While the event focuses on legislated policies and is therefore political in nature, Judy A. Carbone, President of AAUW-Garrett County and Chair of the WED2024 Planning Committee, stresses that it is not a partisan event and will not promote any candidate in or running for office.
The event will open with a keynote address from Meghan Kissell, Senior Director of Policy and Member Advocacy at the American Association of University Women (AAUW), Washington D.C. Kissell’s expertise and advocacy work promise to offer a compelling perspective on the ongoing efforts to uphold and expand Title IX protections. According to Carbone, AAUW National is the country’s largest and oldest women’s equity organization in the country and one of the most active legislative and policy advocates with an impressive record of fighting for equity for all.
A panel of local Garrett County educational equity professionals is also a part of the event agenda. Panelists include Shelley Menear, Director of Equity, Compliance, and Security at Garrett College, and Dr. Jane Wildesen, Director of Human Resources at Garrett County Public Schools. Both are involved in the implementation of Title IX and other equity issues in Garrett County educational institutions. Moderated by Heather Hanline, Executive Director of The Dove Center, the panel will navigate the sensitive and nuanced topics surrounding Title IX.
The panelists will conduct a question-and-answer session with the audience, leading to a discussion on goals surrounding women’s educational equity that our community can support, embrace, strengthen, and actively work towards. The evening will end with a tour of the Career Technology Training Center (CTTC) for participants. Julie Yoder, Dean of Continuing Education and Workforce Development at Garrett College, will work on recruiting women students to talk about their education at the CTTC, especially in those careers with increasing numbers of women.
Each local organization in the coalition sponsoring the event fully supports Women’s Equality Day. Says Denise L. Shay, Regent, Youghiogheny Glades Chapter, NSDAR, “The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Women’s Issues theme is Celebrating and Caring for Women. We believe that women supporting women, empowering women, being cheerleaders for other women, mentoring, and offering a hand in friendship to women in our community is our commitment and goal.”
When asked about the Dove Center’s participation in WED2024, Hanline responded, “Gender inequality plays a significant role in intimate partner violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, and other forms of abuse. At the core of these issues is an imbalance of male privilege, power, and control. Gender inequality is systematically reinforced by abusers as a method of isolation and financial and economic control. Fighting for gender equality also helps in the fight to prevent and end violence against women.”
The coalition chose the topic of Women’s Equity In Education to bring attention to the educational inequities still facing women today and to help our community better understand Title IX. Most people think Title IX only applies to sports, but athletics is only one of ten key areas addressed by the law. These other areas are access to higher education, career education, education for pregnant and parenting students, employment, learning environment, math and science, sexual harassment, standardized testing, and technology.
Gender inequities in education have largely improved since Title IX became law in 1972. Since then, the number of women graduating from high school, higher education programs, and advanced degree programs has increased dramatically, in some areas outnumbering male graduates. There are, however, still inequities.
In athletics, opportunities for both female and male student-athletes to participate have increased dramatically. But more needs to be done. After 50 years, women students still have far fewer opportunities than men to participate in college athletics. Women’s sports programs still receive less funding than men’s programs. Female athletes receive fewer scholarships than male athletes. Athletic departments allocate less recruitment funding for female athletes than male athletes.
Both sexual harassment and sexual violence are forms of sex discrimination covered under Title IX. Schools must have a policy in place that prohibits sex discrimination and grievance procedures that provide for a prompt and equitable resolution when incidents occur. There is greater attention on these issues in education now, due in large part to Title IX. Although sexual harassment and sexual assault can happen to anyone, female students are still disproportionately affected, impeding their safety, comfort, equal access to education, and completion rates.
Complaints against Title IX include being too complicated and expensive to implement, negatively affecting sports for men and boys, and its lack of clarity on transgender and non-binary people. This year, the Biden Administration’s efforts to strengthen and clarify Title IX requirements to be more inclusive and equitable have been of great controversy in educational and political arenas. The program will explore some of the controversy.
Women’s Equality Day has been observed annually since 1971 and celebrated in Garrett County for the past three years by the previously mentioned coalition of women’s organizations. The Garrett County Republican Women also participated in 2021 and have been invited every year since.
In the first local celebration in 2021, the participating members of the coalition marked the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the constitutional right to vote. The 2021 theme was “Hard Won…Not Done”, focusing on the “Hard Won” fight for women’s suffrage. The Women’s Equality Day celebration in 2022 continued this theme, focusing on the fact that realizing and enshrining gender equality is “Not Done” and showing a collection of poster art that amplified the fact that the Equal Rights Amendment is still not part of the US Constitution. In 2023, a workshop on Women’s Equity and Economic Empowerment was held on Women’s Equality Day.
“As we celebrate the day women in the U.S. obtained the right to vote, we must acknowledge there is much still to be done to ensure full gender equality and parity,” says Charlene Pullias, of the Garrett County Democratic Women. “We hope to provide information on ensuring women’s equity in education and all areas of our community. The bottom line is that when women thrive, communities thrive. This is true all over the world.”
For more information on the 2024 Women’s Equality Day Celebration in Garrett County, visit the Facebook page. Each of the sponsoring organizations also has Facebook pages.
