Women’s Equality Day 2023 will be celebrated in Garrett County this year with an event focusing on Women’s Equity and Economic Empowerment on Friday, August 25, 6:00 PM-8:00 PM, at the Performing Arts Center at Garrett College. The event 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. Each of these local organizations will be tabling at the event and available to speak directly to attendees about resources and opportunities leading to women’s economic empowerment.
The event is free and open to anyone interested in the topic. Refreshments will be served, with food catered by Deep Creek Lake Charcuterie.
To address the issue of Women’s Equity and Economic Empowerment, the event will open with a keynote address from Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman, the 34th Comptroller of the state of Maryland and the first woman to be independently elected to one of our state’s constitutional offices. As Comptroller, Brooke says she is “dedicated to creating a Maryland that is more equitable, more resilient, and more prosperous so that all Marylanders can reach their full potential.”
A panel of local Garrett County women involved in aspects of addressing women’s equity and economic empowerment will follow the keynote address. The panel is entitled “Women Talking to Women: Strategies for Enhancing Your Economic Empowerment”. Serving on the panel are Denise Phelps, Director of Employee Diversity & Engagement, First United Bank; Kimberly Govi, Director of Professional Education/Garrett College; and Heather Hanline, Executive Director, The Dove Center. Each of these Garrett County women are working with issues of gender equality in their professions and can discuss solutions that we as a community need to support, embrace, and strengthen. Their comments will be followed by a question-and-answer session and general discussion with the audience.
The coalition chose the topic of Women’s Equity and Economic Empowerment based on a series of startling statistics and research that supports their validity. These statistics will be presented at the seminar for general discussion and include:
- Women make up 67 percent of workers earning the federal minimum wage according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- Women hold approximately 2/3 of college debt, more college debt than men in all racial groups. According to the American Association of University Women, black women graduate with the most debt — $30,400 on average compared to $22,000 for white women and $19,500 for white men.
- S. Census Bureau Data finds that among full-time workers, women earned an average of 83 cents for every dollar a man earned in 2021, up from 76 cents in 2001. This number for Garrett County women is 69 cents for every dollar a man earned in 2021, 56.7 cents for women with a high school diploma or equivalent.
- Households led by single women with children had a poverty rate of 35.6 percent, more than twice the 17.3 percent rate for households led by single men with children, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
- Women have significantly higher poverty rates than men, and the gender poverty gap widened over the past 50 years. In 2016, 13.4 percent of women aged 18-64 (13.4 million women) were living in poverty, compared to 9.7 percent of adult men (9.4 million men). According to the US Census Bureau, in Garrett County The largest demographic living in poverty are women ages 25-34 (1.6 times more than men in poverty); women 74 years and older are 3.75 times more prevalent in poverty than men.
- According to the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, American women hold 34% of the median retirement savings that men hold. Some 21 percent of women and 12 percent of men have less than $10,000 in retirement accounts.
- Data published by the Veteran’s Administration shows that women Veterans who served after 9/11 experience unemployment and underemployment at greater rates than their male counterparts and women Veterans of other eras.
- The COVID-19 pandemic caused more mothers to stop working than fathers. Because women tend to bear more responsibility for family caregiving, women with children were more likely than men to drop out of the labor force when schools and care centers closed due to COVID, according to the Maryland Commission for Women which conducted research into the effects of COVID on women in 2022.
- Rand Corporation research reveals that the steepest decline in labor force participation in the first phase of the pandemic was among women with two children, at 3.82 points, compared to a 1.39-point drop for men with two children. More recently, the shortage of affordable childcare services has emerged as a barrier for women in returning to jobs in restaurants and other low-wage sectors, contributing to staffing challenges.
These and other statistics will be highlighted at the WED2023 event.
Women’s Equality Day has been observed annually for the past 50 years and celebrated in Garrett County for the past three years by the previously mentioned coalition of women’s organizations.
In 2021, the participating members of the coalition marked the celebration of the 100th year 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 despite a 100-year campaign to include women in the Constitution.
“There is much still to be done to ensure full gender equality and parity. The campaign to recognize the pervasive inequality and work on solutions to ensure undeniable equality has been going on for 175 years, since the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY, in 1848,” says Judy Carbone, President of AAUW-Garrett Branch and chair of the WED2023 planning committee. “We hope to provide information on how striving to ensure women’s equity and economic empowerment can be a part of the solution for our county’s challenges, including healthy families, developing new businesses, strengthening our workforce, and building our schools. Bottom line is that when women thrive, communities thrive. This is true all over the world.”
For more information on the 2023 Women’s Equality Day Celebration in Garrett County, visit the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/events/217303371123415/?ref=newsfeed. Each of the sponsoring organizations also have Facebook pages.
