Private Funding Initiatives For Women and Girls Announced at White House Summit

(sooo, "my brother's keeper" gets all kinds of funding, including govt, but women and girls get nada-- why am I not impressed, or surprised?)

Private Funding Initiatives For Women and Girls Announced at White House Summit


On Friday, the White House’s Council on Women and Girls hosted a day-long summit focused on advancing equity and elevating the status of women and girls in the United States. The Summit also served as a venue for institutions to announce new initiatives focusing on women and girls. Unlike the previously announced My Brother’s Keeper program, the initiatives unveiled on Friday are not public-private partnerships and will receive no funding or resources from the Obama Administration.

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris Perry, the director of the Anna Cooper Center at Wake Forest University, led the event and was joined by expert panelists including Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Cecilia Muñoz of the White House Domestic Policy Council and the Ms. Foundation’s Teresa Younger. The summit introduced key strategies for addressing inequity experienced by women and girls of color. Women and girls from around the world joined the conversation via social media using the hashtag #YesSheCan.


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*******In 2014, the Obama Administration created the My Brother’s Keeper Taskforce, which has attracted over $300 million in funding, and an additional $85 million for its non-profit spinoff. The total for the new private initiative for women and girls is only $118 million and does not come with any White House infrastructure like the aforementioned Taskforce.*******

My Brother’s Keeper has received criticism for failing to acknowledge the unique challenges faced by their female peers. Studies show girls of color experience a disproportionately higher rate of school suspensions than their white counterparts, comprise 32 percent of juvenile arrests and detentions and remain more than twice as likely to become pregnant as teens as young white women.

http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2015/11/16/private-funding-initiatives-for-women-and-girls-announced-at-white-house-summit/