On Tuesday, Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis will introduce a motion to create a five-year Initiative on Women and Girls in Los Angeles County government. It directs all 37 county departments to address the disproportionate disadvantages facing women and girls here. If it is enacted, the county would systematically review its activities and refocus resources in order to advance women’s opportunities.
Such a comprehensive approach to promoting gender equality is unusual in the United States. But it’s not as if it’s untested. Governing with a gender perspective has become the norm in democracies in every region of the world. And the approach is yielding promising results.
Gender-focused initiatives represent an explicit commitment to equal rights, as well as a growing recognition that progress for women has stalled using conventional policy techniques. Anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws — the typical approach in the United States — are indispensable, but they’re mostly aimed at punishing civil rights violations. There’s a much wider range of proactive steps available to advance women’s equality.
Kuehl and Solis’ initiative could quickly shape county policy. For example, it’s estimated that Measure M, the transportation package that Angelenos just passed, will create about 450,000 jobs. If business as usual prevails, these jobs will go overwhelmingly to men, because construction, engineering and transit work are male-dominated professions. (Equal opportunity laws have done little to boost women’s share of construction jobs — less than 1% of L.A. County women work in construction.) But with gender equity as a starting principle, policymakers could require simple measures that would encourage women to seek these high-paying jobs.
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