In May 2005, the Women’s Foundation of California embarked on the Road to Equity Tour, an ambitious project to identify the issues, needs and solutions for women and girls in California. Over a period of 23 days, our staff traveled more than 2,500 miles to 10 cities — San Francisco, San Jose, Fort Bragg, Redding, San Diego, Riverside, Santa Ana, Bakersfield, Fresno and Los Angeles. We met more than 1,000 women and girls who shared their insights, heartfelt testimony, hunger for action and incredible enthusiasm about the power of women and girls to change the world for the better.
Reflecting the information gathered from Tour participants, the Women’s Foundation of California has identified five recommendations for developing a statewide agenda for women and girls. These recommendations are built around four core strategies of:
- community-organizing for movement building,
- leadership development for women and girls,
- policy advocacy
- increasing investments in programs that benefit women and girls.
Key Issues for Women and Girls in California
How did we create the statewide agenda? Tour participants were led through a process to discuss the key issues facing women and girls and to identify the strategies they believed were most likely to help women and girls become full participants in their communities and achieve gender equity. Consistently — at each listening session, in every city — Tour participants suggested that the social, political, economic, community and family issues that affect women and girls are linked and that any recommendations or solutions developed to redress these concerns must acknowledge and build upon these interconnections. These inextricable links between basic human rights are supported and framed in the following five categories identified as key issues:
1. Improving Access to Affordable, Quality Healthcare
Today, the average annual cost of health insurance for a family of four in California is more than $10,800 — exceeding the annual income of a minimum wage earner. A report released in February 2005 found that half of the people who filed for bankruptcy did so because they lacked the means to pay their medical bills. Most of these people were middle-class workers with health insurance. Tour participants throughout the state identified a need to expand access to health clinics that provide free and low-cost prevention, diagnostic and treatment services. They also stressed the need for hospitals and clinics to provide both multicultural and multilingual care — a particular concern in California, where people of color make up more than half of the state’s population and one in every six residents is not a US citizen.
