International Women’s Day & Gender Responsive Programming
Buenos dias and hola from Sunday Morning Coffee! It’s that time of year when we celebrate all of the fabulous women around the world, shaking it up, making things happen, raising humans, and doing all the stuff they can dream of. I wasn’t even aware that there was such a day until I moved to Washington, DC and was asked to be a guest mentor at an event for women serving in the Department of Justice. It was a milestone day for me as I met a few ladies that day that are still in my life, and if I started out as a mentor for them, boy, have I learned FROM them!
Women in education are heroes. I mean it! They keep the industry afloat, albeit not as often in leadership roles as the men are. A survey done by the American Association of School Administrators reports that about 1/4 of Superintendents across the country are women and the percentage of minority women is dismal. 25% of women are in leadership positions despite the fact that 73.4% of teachers are female.
In corrections, despite some progress, women still face major obstacles in a male-dominated career field and find it difficult to break into the ranks of management. In 2021, about 1/3 of correctional officers were female. That percentage has held steady since 2010. But these women serve alongside their male counterparts, doing the job, doing it with heart, and kicking at that glass ceiling.
So, to those of you who teach, counsel, manage case loads, tend to the sick, keep the wheels on the bus (figuratively and literally), serve as administrators, and do all the other myriad of jobs in schools, prisons and jails, who continue to persevere and excel every day, day after day, year after year, thank you for what you do. It’s not easy, but you sure do make it look so!
As long as we’re celebrating women, I want to give a nod to the women across the country who are incarcerated, away from their families and out of the workforce. We need to improve our efforts to provide gender-responsive and work readiness programming to them. By gender-responsive, I don’t mean that we confine our career preparation to cosmetology or culinary, either. But rather that we concentrate our efforts on providing training that will get them real jobs, paying enough to support themselves and their families. We hear a lot about offering STEM education to high school girls and college women, and we should be doing the same for our citizens who are trying to find a better way during a period of confinement.
The United States releases approximately 600,000 individuals back into communities each year. About 78,000 of those folks are women, equating to more than 200 every day. What can we do pre-release to make post-release a success?
Ladies, you’re totally rocking this thing called life, and don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise! I raise my coffee cup today and say, robustly, out loud, “Cheers to Girl Power!”
Sincerely,
One Girl Revolution (aka Dr. Lopez)
