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Every Women's Opportunity Center
Erie County Coalition Against Family Violence
Erie County Commission on the Status of Women
Girl Scouts of WNY
Haven House
Neighborhood Legal Services
The Junior League of Buffalo
Planned Parenthood
Suicide Prevention and Crisis Services
WNY Women's Fund
YWCA of Tonawanda
YWCA of Buffalo
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| Save the Date - Cokie Roberts |
Second Annual Signature Event, featuring Keynote Speaker - Cokie Roberts
Date: July 21, 2010
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: Mary Seaton Room of Kleinhan's Music Hall
Chairs: Melissa Nowak and Lisa J. Walsh
Honorary Chairs: Susan and John Hoskins
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| Women's History Month Kick-Off |
Brigid Doherty and Anne Leary, JLB President
 | On March 4, the WNY Women's Fund co-presented a day-long celebration to kick-off Women's History Month and the collaboration around Pathways to Progress. Over 15 organizations hosted tables in the afternoon at the Buffalo & Erie County Central Library providing information about their services to the public. At 4 p.m. a press conference was held announcing that 12 women's organizations are supporting Pathways to Progress through convenings, conversations, and investments in specific leverage points. Also, the Women's History Month calendar was presented, highlighting local activities and performances, during the month of March, happening around the community.
Sawrie Becker, Brigid, Anne Leary, Teresa Glanowski, Karen Nelson, Kristen Luppino, Grace Huff, Jill Townson
 | Following the press conference, the Junior League of Buffalo and WNY Women's Fund hosted a cupcake and champagne reception. The cupcakes were generously donated by Butterwood Desserts and were a huge hit. The day provided an opportunity for women's organizations to recognize the women who came before us and the work that needs to be done to better our community for the future. |
| Board Members: Outgoing and Incoming |
The WNY Women's Fund thanks three fantastic outgoing board members for their extraordinary service: Anne Saldanha, Alice Kryzan and Jayne Rand. The Fund would also like to thank outgoing Board Chair Tricia Semmelhack after three years of outstanding service.
The WNY Women's Fund is thrilled to welcome our new Board Chair Gail Johnstone as well as five new board members: Alice Jacobs, Lisa Friedman, Ann Evanko, Cheryl Howe, and Michele Lee. We look forward to utilizing their talent, passion, and enthusiasm to increase opportunities for women and girls in Western New York. |
| Pathways to Progress: Highlight on Gina |
 This month we will introduce you to Gina, one of 17,000 women raising children on their own and living in poverty.
To get back on her feet, and headed toward economic security, Gina needs help with life skills - from parenting to managing money - and ultimately education and training geared toward sustainable employment. Affordable, quality child care would allow her to balance work and school, while giving her child a strong developmental foundation. Given Gina's road ahead, guidance and personal resolve are perhaps the most critical supports of all.
Roadblocks to Escaping Poverty:
66% of families in poverty in WNY are headed by single women, above state and national averages
Despite loss of population overall in WNY, the number of single mothers in poverty has risen over the past decade
The welfare system (TANF) is not affectively meeting the needs of women
Roadblocks to Education and Training Toward Career Pathway:
WNY women who have no high school degree or GED are nearly two times as likely to be in poverty as those who complete their high school degree
WNY's challenging job market is characterized by low wages and a relative scarcity of high-paying unskilled jobs
The field in which women earn degrees may play a role - at the associate's level, women are far more likely than men to hold degrees in field such as child care, hospitality and health services, where salaries are relatively low
Roadblocks to Sustainable, Interesting Work:
Women's jobs garner lower wages compared to men - three of the top 10 jobs for WNY women generate median salaries of less than $30,000, while all of the top jobs for men are above this threshold
Even in top occupations held by both men and women, women earn significantly less
Men in WNY also tend to dominate higher-wage, non-white collar occupations such as construction, transportation, and installation, maintenance and repair
The good news is that there are ways that these roadblocks can be removed, including several important leverage points:
Leverage Point #1: Increase access to human services
Leverage Point #2: Provide educational and vocational training toward career pathways
Leverage Point #3: Support child care affordability, quality and accessibility
Leverage Point #4: Push to reform welfare policy and practices
Investing in education and economic security for women is investing in families. It's giving women the tools to earn a living wage, support their families financially, and maintain a higher quality of life. It's giving her children a stronger foundation for life, and disrupting a cycle of poverty.
What if: WNY reduced poverty among single mothers by 50%?
A $137 million investment could send 8,500 single mothers to college to earn a bachelor's degree or an associate's degree in high-growth, high-wage fields.
Newly educated, the collective household income of single mothers in WNY would increase by $53 million a year, allowing the region to recoup the cost of educating 8,500 women in less than 3 years.
As those dollars circulate through the WNY economy, the entire region - and the public tax base - benefits. Communities are more vital, stronger and safer due to lower poverty levels.
And a cycle of poverty is disrupted,as 16,000 children will be more likely to achieve success in school, graduate from high school and go to college themselves.
Pathways to Progress is an initiative of the WNY Women's Fund, and was developed and produced by the University at Buffalo Regional Institute. |
From The Economist, December 9, 2009
Graph Courtesy of The Economist
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Women in the workforce
Female power
Across the rich world more women are working than ever before. Coping with this change will be one of the great challenges of the coming decades
The world's biggest economy has adopted an idiosyncratic approach. America provides no statutory paid leave for mothers and only 12 weeks unpaid. At least 145 countries provide paid sick leave. America allows only unpaid absence for serious family illness. America's public spending on family support is low by OECD standards (see chart 3). It spends only 0.5% of its GDP on public support for child care compared with 1.3% in France and 2.7% in Denmark. It is difficult to evaluate the relative merits of these various arrangements. Different systems can produce similar results: anti-statist America has roughly the same proportion of children in kindergartens as statist Finland. Different systems have different faults. Sweden is not quite the paragon that its fans imagine, despite its family-friendly employment policies. Only 1.5% of senior managers are women, compared with 11% in America. Three-quarters of Swedish women work in the public sector; three-quarters of men work in the private sector. But there is evidence that America and Britain, the countries that combine high female employment with reluctance to involve the state in child care, serve their children especially poorly. A report by Unicef in 2007 on children in rich countries found that America and Britain had some of the lowest scores for "well-being".
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Please feel free to contact us to find out more about our programs.
WNY Women's Fund
742 Delaware Avenue
Buffalo, New York 14209
(716) 887-2777
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