{"id":6109,"date":"2017-05-17T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T16:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=6109"},"modified":"2017-05-16T16:43:25","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T00:43:25","slug":"fighting-improve-lives-oregon-women-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/fighting-improve-lives-oregon-women-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting to improve the lives of Oregon women and girls"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Paige Scofield\r\nCampus Life Editor<\/pre>\n
On May 11, Abby\u2019s house hosted guest speaker Emily Evans, the executive director of the Women\u2019s Foundation of Oregon, to present her lecture, \u201cCount Her In.\u201d The director of Abby\u2019s House at Western, Dr. Aislinn Addington, introduced Evans to the full crowd of the Willamette Room, who were eager to hear the presentation.<\/p>\n
The Women\u2019s Foundation of Oregon\u2019s \u201cmission is to focus the power of women\u2019s collective resources to improve the lives of women and girls throughout Oregon,\u201d explained Addington. \u201cThe \u2018Count Her In\u2019 report is the first comprehensive research on this topic for more than 20 years, and now is the most expansive, actionable and inclusive analysis of Oregon women and girls to date.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evans explained that the \u201cCount Her In\u201d report was information compiled from different towns in Oregon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made 14 different stops all around the state. We heard from a thousand women and girls. We had sessions in Spanish, Somali, Russian and we heard from a really good cross section based on race, education level, income, geography and age,\u201d explained Evans. \u201cWhat we heard was a really resounding understanding of what the challenges are for women and girls in Oregon. Turns out women and girls in Oregon know exactly what\u2019s wrong, and what they told us matched up perfectly with the data.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is one thing, one single sentence that you take away from this session here today, it\u2019s this: women and girls in Oregon are contributing an extraordinary amount to communities all across the state, and in return they\u2019re facing some of the starkest gender inequities in the country,\u201d stated Evans.<\/p>\n
Evans wanted to begin with the great things that Oregon women and girls excel at in comparison to other states, rather than begin with the things they lack. So Evans began discussing the, \u201cEight to Celebrate,\u201d which include: civic engagement, caregiving, minimal violent crime, highest rate of physical activities than any other state, education and health care jobs, generosity with money and time, elected at higher rates in public service than other states and Oregon girls met the state\u2019s 2025 goal for college graduation rates in 2014.<\/p>\n
Though these eight achievements are something to celebrate, there are still many things that need to be worked on to improve the lives of women and girls in Oregon, and those are \u201cThe Eight that Can\u2019t Wait,\u201d which include: violence against women, systemic racism, the cost of caregiving, gaps in reproductive health access, wage and wealth gap, economic fragility, mental health challenges and the public\/private glass ceilings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the eight issues that rose to the top in three ways,\u201d said Evans. \u201cThe first is there was a discrepancy between how men and boys in Oregon were doing, and how women and girls in Oregon were doing. The next is there was a discrepancy between how women and girls in Oregon were doing versus women and girls nationally. And the final one is that these eight were the ones that rose to the top in every single community we visited.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cCount Her In\u201d report has put together a list of five things that every Oregonian can do to help make life for Oregon women and girls better, and they are, asking questions, voting, donating, sharing information and recognizing the struggles Oregonian women and girls face.<\/p>\n
Contact the author at journalcampuslife@wou.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Paige Scofield Campus Life Editor On May 11, Abby\u2019s house hosted guest speaker Emily Evans, the executive director of the Women\u2019s Foundation of Oregon, to present her lecture, \u201cCount Her In.\u201d The director of Abby\u2019s House at Western, Dr. Aislinn Addington, introduced Evans to the full crowd of the Willamette Room, who were eager […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":937,"featured_media":6149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-life"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/937"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}