On March 29, 2012, Mount St. Mary's College publicly released a comprehensive report that looked at the status of women and girls in California. Our President and CEO Judy Patrick was a featured speaker at the event.
The Report on the Status of Women and Girls in California focuses on key areas crucial to the advancement of women. It is California's first comprehensive look at key areas impacting women's lives, such as changing demographics, poverty, mental and physical health, incarceration, employment, the media and much more. It presents never-before-compiled data in a format for general use.
Combining data from this report with the data from our recently published report Falling Behind, Judy talked about the economic security of women in California, the BEST Index, the Women's Policy Institute and the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights.
“When you look into the report, you will see that the incidence of poverty for single female-headed households is at 35%. This poverty rate has increased during the recession and is significantly higher than the overall poverty rate in the state of California… In this recession, single mothers have fared much worse than anybody else. The employment rate for single-headed households has dropped by 10%, meaning that the employment rate is now at 59%. This was the same rate that these women had in 1996, so this is a huge retraction in the rate of employment at the same time that there has been a drop in earnings.”
To hear from Judy, fast forward to 8:35, 26:06 and 36:29.