Envisioning A Brighter Future: Young Female Change Makers Today

GOVERNMENT ROLES AND ASSOCIATED PRIVILEGE ASMI GUJRAL+

LET’S TALK ABOUT THE GENDER WAGE GAP KATELYN HOWARD+

THE GLOBAL FIGHT: FOR EDUCATION & EQUALITY NAIA PIZARRO+ A GLIMPSE OF MALALA YOUSFAZAI'S LIFEI HARINI SANGEETHAM+

Magazine Cover by Palak Yadav

DEAR GLOBAL GIRLS MARCH 2021 ISSUE

ENVISIONING A BRIGHTER FUTURE: YOUNG FEMALE CHANGE MAKERS TODAY

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Dear GlobalGirls

Dear GlobalGirls

dearglobalgirls.org

Our Message Dear GlobalGirls and fellow readers, Dear GlobalGirls is a monthly digital magazine dedicated to educate, inspire, and empower young girls around the globe. Our mission is to empower girls through educating them on current events and social issues, highlighting young girls who show leadership in their communities, and overall creating a welcoming and resourceful space. Founded by two Generation Z high school students from New York City, we strive to encourage girls to speak out for themselves, inspiring them to become the next leaders of our generation.

This month’s magazine focuses on the political, governmental, and social effects on minority voices and the positive impacts initiated by youth. Our team worked diligently researching, as well as using their own opinions, to bring light to the inequities around the government and their systems. It is truly inspiring to see the voices of our writers come to life on paper, and we hope this month's magazine fosters interest in fighting for systemic change. If you are interested in pursuing a career in the government or becoming an activist, be sure to read each piece and learn about the stories of these incredible pioneers of lifechanging movements.

Throughout this magazine, we hope you've learned something new. Participate in the fight towards the end of unequal representation. Let's work together to fight against climate change and the lack of girls' education. All people should have access to efficient public services and be heard.

With these topics in mind, we are excited to see what is in store for Dear GlobalGirls as we continue to create monthly magazines serving to educate, inspire, and empower girls around the globe! We hope you take away a new piece of information and take your part in creating a more equitable society.

Lastly, a huge thank you to our team who have been dedicated to serving our organization in the creation of our monthly magazines. .

We’d love to hear all your thoughts and suggestions so please email us at dearglobalgirls@gmail.com to chat or give feedback.

Sincerely, Sandra and Talia (founders)

Government Roles and Associated Privilege Written by Asmi Gujral The government, which although was originally designed to view everyone’s needs as equal, quickly evolved

1

into a system where the needs of those with privilege are prioritized far more. Consider the Trump Tax Reform Plan from 2018, where 400 of the wealthiest Americans ended up paying a lower tax rate than the working

2

class. When economics and class come into play, it becomes clear how economic background influences one’s political views. Among income brackets, a study done by the PEW Research Center showed that income backgrounds below $30,000 have a proportionally higher rate of Democrat-leaning adults. So, where does diversity in government roles play into this?

When a system is designed specifically to benefit a certain group of people, at the expense of another, there becomes a need for diversity among government authorities to ensure that the type of people represented in the government are not biased strictly towards the interests of their identity, where privileged communities keep

3

receiving resources and wealth instead of those resources going to communities more direly in need. An alarming

example

of

this

is

the

U.S

Equal

Employment

Opportunity

Commission,

which

is

responsible

for

enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against job applicants and employees on the basis of race, religion, color, disability, and place of birth. Even though the EEOC receives thousands of inquiries annually, it lacks significant funding and staffing to properly uphold its accountability principles. Despite the workforce employing 125 million workers in America, the agency’s inflation-adjusted budget from 1980-2018 has still not been increased by the US government. The impact?

In 2018, EEOC allotted $505 million for victims of discrimination, but due to the lack of resources, there is a constant

backlog

of

approximately

50,000

charges.

The

main

issue

is

that

even

with

organizations

and

infrastructures in place to support POC, specifically women/trans/gender-non-conforming/non-binary folks of color, with a flawed government system that favors certain communities and systematically gives them privilege, progress on improving economic advantages and opportunities for POC will still fall short regardless of the intention. So, if the foundation of supporting POC relies on legal backing, as well as resources from the government, diversifying the government body would then drastically help consider more perspectives when executing government processes, more commonly known as basic public services.

Writer’s Note: This article was written by a CIS WOC. While I can certainly empathize with Black-Indigenous Women/TGNC/NB folks, I can never know what it is like to be them or face the same issues as them. That being said, if any of the information or the opinions expressed in this article was harmful to the Black-Indigenous Women/TGNC/NB community, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me via email, accessible through the DGG database.

1.Maldonado, C. (2019, October 10). Trump Tax Cuts Helped Billionaires Pay Less Taxes Than The Working Class In 2018. Retrieved August 13, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2019/10/10/trump-tax-cuts-helped-billionaires-pay-less-taxes-than-the-working-class-in-2018/ 2. Pew Research Center (2020, July 28). Growing Partisan Divide Over Fairness of the Nation's Tax System. Retrieved August 13, 2020, from https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/04/04/growing-partisan-divide-over-fairness-of-the-nations-tax-system/ 3. Danyelle Solomon, C. (2019, August 7). Systematic Inequality and Economic Opportunity. Retrieved August 13, 2020, from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472910/systematic-inequality-economic-opportunity/

Let’s Talk About the Gender Wage Gap

BY: KATELYN HOWARD

Following World Wars I and II, women were starting to be seen as more than just the homemaker. Today, women are encouraged to have a career, and women in the workplace are much more common. However, society’s sexist and discriminatory culture still affects women in many ways. One major way, being their salaries due to the wage gap. The gender wage gap is the difference in earnings between full-time working men and women across all industries. This is a global issue where vast differences are seen even in developed countries. In the United States, women earned, on average, only $0.82 for every $1 earned by men.1 Figure 1 below, provides a breakdown of pay for women of different ethnicities.

Figure 1 also shows that the gender wage gap is significantly larger for most minority women of color. Asian women may not seem to have as large of a gap as other groups, however, this picture does not show that there are differences among the various subgroups that fall under the Asian ethnicity. For example, Filipino women make $0.83, Tongan women make $0.75, and Nepali women make $0.50 for every $1 a man makes.1 .

Another group that has not been as well studied in terms of the gender wage gap conversation is women that are part of the LGBTQIA community. There is very little data on the wage gaps these women face. The differences presented in Figure 1 above might seem insignificant, but if we look over 40 years of work, women are making hundreds of thousands of dollars less than a man. In Figure 2, we can see how the gender wage gap negatively impacts the income of women throughout their careers.

The seemingly small difference between women and men presented in Figure 1 explodes

1

when the number is calculated to show the wage gap extended over 40 years (Figure 2).

Even though gender-based pay discrimination was made illegal in 1963, women are still being

underpaid for doing the same work as men, especially women of color. Racism and sexism in our society are big factors in the wage gap in the US. While discrimination against women is a very big factor in the wage gap there are also others. Women and men have stereotypes around the types of jobs that are “meant for” men and women. According to American Progress, “...researchers can see effects of occupational segregation, or the funneling of women and men into different types of industries and jobs based on gender norms and expectations”. There are certain jobs, such as home health aides and children’s workers that have a majority-female workforce. These types of jobs end to offer lower pay and fewer benefits as compared t to majority-male jobs in areas like STEM, business, or construction.

Women are also more likely to leave a job to take care of children which means that they will have less time in the work-force

and

face

the

added hurdle of trying to return to their careers at a later time. Pay discrimination can

also

companies

be

prevalent

where

it

in is

discouraged to discuss wages.

In the United States as a whole, salaries aren’t usually discussed in the workplace.

There is also a cycle of low wages for women because when they are offered a new job, employers may rely on previous

salary

history

determine their new salary.

to

So how can we close the wage gap? It won’t be easy. According to the Center for American Progress, the gender wage gap has only closed by around $0.04 in more than a decade. At that rate, the gender wage gap won’t close until around 2059, and that’s if men’s salaries don’t continue to rise. For the wage gap to continue to close, the government needs to continue updating its equal pay reform laws. The Paycheck Fairness Act is a bill that may bring about more progress in the fight to end gender-based pay discrimination. It would update the Equal Pay Act that was passed in 1963 and would make several changes to the law. This bill would make sure that differences in pay are based on factors other than sex (such as education), allow employees to ask their superiors about their pay and talk about salaries in the workplace without getting penalized for it, and strengthen penalties for companies that are violating equal pay laws. This bill would make much-needed improvements to the laws already in place. Unfortunately, this bill still hasn’t passed despite being introduced 20 years ago. The bill was reintroduced in 2019 and as Representative OcasioCortez said, “It is time to pay people what they are worth and not how little they are desperate enough to accept”.

With the current pandemic, the situation of the wage gap has become even more dire. An article by NPR stated that between February and April of 2020, “male unemployment 5

increased 9.9%” while “female unemployment increased 12.8%.” The pandemic has forced closures of many in-person service jobs at restaurants, hotels, stores, etc. which are largely done by women. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to be able to work from home. With the closing of schools, daycares, and other facilities, children are juggling the difficulties of school as their parents try to figure out how to balance work and childcare. A major study done by the Boston Consulting Group has found that, while both mothers and fathers are taking on more responsibilities of childcare, women still spend around 15 hours more than men doing domestic labor.6 The disproportionate amount of time women are spending on housework, cooking, cleaning, and childcare has taken time away from their careers. As a result, a disproportionate amount of women are choosing to leave their jobs. The coronavirus pandemic has led to the largest economic recession and amount of jobs lost since the Great Depression. This pandemic has opened people’s eyes to major disparities in the workforce, a major one being the wage gap.

The wage gap is an issue that has plagued working women for decades. Women deserve to get paid the same amount of money as a man for doing the same amount of work. As the next generation, we need to continue to fight for improved government laws that will ensure once and for all that women are paid the same as men. Proposed bills that could help close the gender wage gap have been delayed for far too long. If we don’t start fighting now, we could be facing this issue for another twenty years. In this time of change, working to close the gender wage gap is an essential step to ending society’s racist and sexist culture.

1.Robin Bleiweis, “Quick Facts About the Gender Wage Gap.” Center for American Progress, |PAGE| accessed on June 15, 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2020/03/24/482141/quick-facts-gender-wage-gap/.

2."Equal Pay for Equal Work: Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act," American Civil Liberties Union, April 04, 2013, |PAGE|, accessed June15, 2020, https://www.aclu.org/other/equal-pay-equal-work-pass-paycheckfairness-act.

3.Toni Van Pelt, "Commentary: The Paycheck Fairness Act Would Help Close the Gender Wage Gap. Why Won't the Senate Pass It?" Fortune, August 26, 2019, |PAGE|, accessed June 16, 2020, https://fortune.com/2019/08/26/womens-equality-day-paycheck-fairness-act/ 4.Emma Newburger, "Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Lawmakers Unveil the Paycheck Fairness Act in an Effort to Close the Gender Wage Gap," CNBC, January 31, 2019, |PAGE|, accessed June 29, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/30/nancy-pelosi-unveils-the-paycheck-fairness-act-to-close-the-pay-gap.html 5. Kurtzleben, Danielle. “How Coronavirus Could Widen The Gender Wage Gap.” NPR. NPR, June 28, 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/28/883458147/how-coronavirus-could-widen-the-gender-wage-gap.

6.Krentz, Matt, Emily Kos, Anna Green, and Jennifer Garcia-Alonso. “Easing the COVID-19 Burden on Working Parents.” United States - EN. Boston Consulting Group, January 8, 2021. https://www.bcg.com/enus/publications/2020/helping-working-parents-ease-the-burden-of-covid-19.

6.Danyelle Solomon, C. (2019, August 7). Systematic Inequality and Economic Opportunity. Retrieved August 13, 2020, from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472910/systematic-inequality-economic-opportunity/

Naia Pizarro

The Global Fight: For Education & Equality

The pursuit for an equitable and accessible education is an ongoi ng cri si s faced globally. The disparity however is apparent in not just soci o-economi c groups, but specifically gender.

Gi rl s experi ence an unfai r di spari ty i n educati on; l ack of fai r, safe access, l ack of opportuni ti es, and fi nanci al obstacl es.

Accordi ng to the Uni ted Nati ons Educati onal , Sci enti fi c, and Cul tural Organi zati on, the UN states that an average of 130 mi l l i on gi rl s from the ages of si x to seventeen are not enrol l ed i n any form of educati on. I n addi ti on, the stati sti cs regardi ng pri mary educati on show a drasti c number of 15 mi l l i on young gi rl s unenrol l ed. These drasti c stati sti cs are di sproporti onate and can not be pi npoi nted to one cause, however, the most common i s due to i nfl i cted poverty, geographi c remoteness, and the ongoi ng confl i ct i n the regi on.

SOURCE: UNISECO INSTITUTE

The l ack of accessi bi l i ty to educati on l i mi ts the opportuni ti es for gi rls to pursue a better l i fe or expand thei r opti ons wi th the doors opened by an educati on. Malala Yousezai f faced thi s obstacl e but deci ded she woul d not al l ow anythi ng or anyone take away her educati on. Mal al a’ s story resonates wi th gi rl s who al so face thi s same obstacle. Mal al a Yousezai f was j ust a young gi rl when she began her acti ve pursui t of accessi ble educati on. When she was no l onger permi tted to attend school due to the Tali ban, a mi l i tary organi zati on i n Afghani stan, orders, Mal al a began to speak out about her concerns and advocated for not j ust the gi rl s i n her school, but gi rls experi enci ng di spl acement i n educati on across the gl obe. Unfortunatel y, her acti vi sm shi ned a li ght on her, and i n October 2012, Mal al a was targeted and shot. After bei ng i n recovery for two years, she states, “ I t was then I knew I had a choi ce, to l i ve a qui et li fe or make the most of thi s new l i fe I was gi ven. ” Mal al a’ s bravery and courage at such a young age i nspi red Yousafazi to create the Mal al a Fund whi ch ai ms to fund opportuni ti es for gi rl s faci ng di scri mi nati on i n educati on, to be abl e to obtai n a free, safe educati on. The Mal al a Fund enabl es young gi rl s to have the freedom to have a future of thei r choosi ng, and not be constri cted by the choi ce between thei r safety and educati on. I n a statement on the fund’ s websi te, Mal al a states, “ Every day I fi ght to ensure al l gi rl s recei ve 12 years of free, safe, qual i ty educati on. I travel to many countri es to meet gi rl s fi ghti ng poverty, wars, chi l d marri age, and gender di scri mi nati on to go to school . Mal al a Fund i s worki ng so that thei r stori es, l i ke mi ne, can be heard around the worl d. ” Mal al a i s now the youngest reci pi ent of the Nobel Peace Pri ze, and conti nues her efforts passi onatel y, fi ghti ng to gi ve gi rl s the educati on they deserve.

(1)Stephanie Seigfried, P4H Intern. “Gender Inequality in Education.” P4H Global, P4H Global, 12 Apr. 2019, p4hglobal.org/p4h-blog/2019/4/12/gender-inequality-ineducation.

(2)“Malala's Story: Malala Fund.” Malala's Story | Malala Fund, www.malala.org/malalas-story.

A Glimpse into Malala Yousafzai’s Life

WRITTEN BY HARINI SANGEETHAM

SURVIVOR OF A GUN INCIDENT, ACTIVIST FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN EDUCATION INFLUENCER, THE YOUNGEST NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER She was born in Mingora, Pakistan on July 12, 1977 in the Swat Valley. Her father ran an allgirls school and was a teacher there. She has a passion for education and her father was supportive of that.

Everything changed when the Taliban took control of Swat Valley. The Tali ban banned many personal rights such as education for girls. There were severe puni shments for those who disobeyed the Taliban’ s laws. But Malala didn’ t let that stop her. She fought back with all her strength. She blogged and spoke a speech at age 11 on the ri ght for her to receive an education. The Taliban didn’ t like this and targeted her as a result. On October 9, 2012, a masked gunman came on her school bus on her way home. He was a part of the Taliban. Three gunshots were shot and one went through the left si de of her head. She was airlifted to a hospital in Pakistan and then a few days later moved to England. There was no brain damage but she went through multiple surgeries before recovery.

She didn’ t let this huge, almost fatal happening stop her.

Malala had this fire inside of her and it never burned out.

The fuel for this fire included her determination and perseverance. She wanted to make an impact and she wouldn’ t stop until she reached her goal. After her well fought recovery, she created the Malala Fund. The Malala Fund is an organization that works on a global scale to give access to education for girls. Not only did she create an organization, she wrote a book alongside Christina Lamb and published “I am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. ” This book talks about all the experiences and hardships she went through to where she is today.

She has managed to influence many lives through a variety of ways. Her words, actions, and gestures change everyone’ s lives, whether they know it or not. She fought back even through the tough times because she believed in what she did. She put her heart and soul into it to make a change for all those women. As for her, she continued higher education at Oxford University. She continues her work through The Malala Fund to ensure girls get sufficient education.

Our March 2021 Team THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION AND DEDICATION!

LAUREN BYUN HEAD DIRECTOR

KATELYN HOWARD

SANDRA CHEAH MAGAZINE EDITOR

EVA EAPEN

EDITORS-IN-CHIEFS AND CO-DIRECTORS OF WRITING

HARINI SANGEETHAM WRITER

PATRICIA MERCADO EDITOR

TALIA CASKEY MAGAZINE EDITOR

ASMI GUJRAL WRITER

RACHEL WONG EDITOR

NAIA PIZARRO WRITER

JASMINE REYES EDITOR