New White House Initiative Focuses on Girls of Color

Concerned by the prevalence of violence and other issues affecting women and girls of color, the White House recently hosted a one-day summit that sought to find solutions for improving the lives of those groups, which have been vulnerable to a variety of issues in recent years.

The conference, called “Advancing Equity for Women & Girls of Color: A Research Agenda for the Next Decade, “was hosted by the White House Council on Women and Girls and the Anna Julia Cooper Center at Wake Forest University, where the event was held.

The summit focused on a number of issues impacting women, particularly women of color, including economic development, health care, criminal justice, vulnerability to violence, hip-hop and images of women in media.

Participants included Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Tina Tchen of the White House Council on Women and Girls, Cecilia Muñoz of the White House Domestic Policy Council, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry and Teresa Younger of the Ms. Foundation.

“Overall, this conference is about recognizing that there are no easy answers to these challenges,” Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to President Obama and chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls. “We’ve made a lot of progress, and continuing on that path means we need to be more dedicated, more thoughtful, and more rigorous than ever.”

At the summit, the White House also announced a $100 million initiative over five years by Prosperity Together, a group of women’s philanthropies, designed to improve the economic security of low-income women. An $18 million funding commitment by the Collaborative to Advance Equity through Research — a group of colleges and universities, research organizations, publishers and public interest institutions led by Wake Forest University — was also announced at the summit to promote research on women and girls of color.

In addition to violence, the council identified five areas where interventions can help women and girls of color, including school discipline – where black girls are suspended at higher rates than girls of any other race or ethnicity and at higher rates than white boys and white girls, the White House notes.

The timing of the summit is critical as there a number of social statistics where African-American girls, for instance are impacted disproportionately to the rest of the population. For example, while African-American girls comprise of about 14 percent of the United States population, they make up 32 percent of juvenile arrests, delinquency petitions, detentions and post-adjudication placements, according to the White House

The White House initiative also calls for increasing access to STEM education and careers.