CPA News Releases, Advisories, and Editorials

Women Leaders From Across the U.S. Shape Action Plan to Tap Women’s Economic Power

America’s Economic Agenda: Women’s Voices for Solutions
Unveiled at Capitol Hill, White House Events

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Women today exercise more political and economic power than ever before, but women still have enormous untapped potential. One hundred top women leaders from across the U.S. including members of Congress and state elected officials joined Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA) President and CEO Linda Tarr-Whelan today in presenting Vice President Gore with an action plan to capitalize on women’s economic power to build strong families and communities.

“This is a blueprint for action to close the economic power gap between men and women and realize women’s economic potential,” said CPA President and CEO Linda Tarr-Whelan.

“Women-owned businesses employ 1 of every 4 workers. Women-owned businesses add $2.3 trillion to the U.S. economy in each year. Women make 80 percent of all consumer decisions. Women are the majority of voters,” said Tarr-Whelan.

“And yet, a woman works until April 3 to earn what a man in the same job made January 1, 1998. Eight of ten women earn less than $25,000 per year. Two out of three working women have no pension. And, three of every five adults living in poverty are women,” she added.

“Those contrasting realities define the gap we must close,” Tarr-Whelan stated.

The recommendations from America’s Economic Agenda: Women’s Voices for Solutions span issues ranging from better child care to equal pay, from small business startup to comprehensive managed care plans. The plan offers best ideas and on-the-ground solutions from grassroots groups and the states in the areas of economic self-sufficiency, entrepreneurship, health care and security, and family and work.

Linda Tarr-Whelan, who also serves as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and was part of the U.S. delegation to Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, is the executive editor of the action plan. It was her leadership that brought together nearly 100 women leaders ¾ from CEOs to Senators, from state legislators to heads of local nonprofits ¾ at CPA’s April 1997 Women’s Economic Leadership Summit. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton served as Honorary Chair of the Summit. A key outcome of this historic conference was a women-led economic agenda for America that reflects what women value.

Through state and local policy solutions and grassroots initiatives, the recommendations in America’s Economic Agenda: Women’s Voices for Solutions help close the gap between women’s economic power and their unrealized potential.

CPA’s action plan aims to close this gap through concrete steps such as:

• Giving women access to business capital and providing them with the know-how to use capital resources and build businesses that sustain themselves and their families.
• Legislation that restricts managed care groups from mandating “drive-through” deliveries and mastectomies, which often limit a woman’s hospital stay to under 48 hours.
• Making elder care a public priority.
• Economic literacy campaigns which teach girls and young women how to earn and manage personal income will foster a new generation of independent women who now how to support themselves.

The action plan is the product of work by the brain trust of women leaders who attended the Women’s Economic Leadership Summit. The issues outlined in the plan and refined at the Summit are those women across the country identified as critical in CPA’s Women’s Voices ’96 survey.

America’s Economic Agenda: Women’s Voices for Solutions is available from CPA and can also be found in its entirety on CPA’s website beginning April 2. CPA is inviting women from across the country to voice their reactions to the action plan through a survey posted on the Women Connect Online website now through April 9, at http://www.womenconnect.com. Results from that survey will be available at the beginning of May.