Tag Archives: Advocacy

AAUW NYS Leadership

Congratulations to the AAUW NYS board members
for a great Summer Leadership Conference
July 22-24, 2016, Cazenovia College

Summer Leadership PicIf you missed, this conference, we focused on Programming and Leadership! Some of the topics included Leadership workshops, Recruiting Leaders, Committees Leadership and Developing Branch Leadership.

Some of the program highlights included a Leadership presentation by Deepti Gudipati, Vice President Programming AAUW and the Work Smart + Start Smart Workshop presentation by Deepti Gudipati to empower women with the skills and confidence to successfully negotiate their salary and benefits packages.

Legal Advocacy Fund at Work for Pay Equity in the Workplace

by
Nancy Mion, ESVB Public Policy Director

New LAF Case – It is always exciting to learn about a new LAF case. The most recently adopted one reflects how the gender pay gap can impact on a woman’s life long earnings.  The Legal Advocacy Fund provides individuals support as they fight for their rights. These are real people who need our financial and organizational help as their cases set precedents and draw attention to inequities.

You may want to share this case with your members. (You may receive info about this case from several other AAUW NYS sources too.) Here is a short summary you might want to use.

The most recent case adopted by the AAUW LAF is Rizo vs. Fresno County Office of Education. It vividly demonstrates the effect the gender pay gap has on women’s salaries. The plaintiff Aileen Rizo, a math consultant, learned that a male colleague, with less experience, was hired on the 9th of 10 steps, while she had been hired on the first step. When she filed a complaint she was told that starting salaries were based solely on the employee’s previous wages. Since women are generally paid les then men, this practice perpetuates the wage gap. Rizo eventually filed suit under the Equal Pay Act and California sex status discrimination statutes

Want to know more about this case? Check out http://aauw-nys.org/laf_casesupport.htm

The Deadline for National AAUW Receiving Your Branchs 2015 Contributions to LAF is December 31. Individual donors often give their donations in December. Please encourage your members to support LAF with their personal contributions to this important AAUW Program. Do ask them to give you the money now before the end of the year deadline.

Empire State Virtual Branch New Member

Juliet
Juliet Tarantino, Empire State Virtual Branch New Member

We are delighted to welcome, Juliet Tarantino, newest primary member of the Empire State Virtual Branch! During fiscal year 2015-2016.”

Juliet Tarantino joins the AAUW with international experience in education and academic training in anthropology (MA in Anthropology for The New School for Social Research). While an undergraduate student at the University of New Hampshire (Dual BA in Anthropology in International Affairs), she organized and led a week-long social justice awareness trip of twelve students to Nicaragua, where trip participants learned about the work of local grassroots organizations and facilitated classroom art activities. Her thesis, based on original research she conducted in Ecuador, examined the entanglement of Ecuadorian Otavaleño’s rejection of tradition alongside their utilization of distinctive traditional dress to bolster their sales of artisan-made items. After graduating from college, Juliet was selected by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education for the position of North American Culture and Language Assistant and taught English in Madrid.

Back in the U.S. and determined to maintain the level of Spanish fluency she had gained in Madrid, Juliet took on the role of Bilingual Intake Coordinator at an immigrant legal services and refugee resettlement agency in Chicago. There, she compiled a series of client stories expressing how their lives had changed after gaining residency in the U.S. She also worked as an independent translator, translating personal statements in support of VAWA cases. Inspired to engage more critically with issues of social justice, Juliet gained her master’s degree in New York City, and began teaching academic research writing to college-bound seniors from underserved high schools. She also coordinates low-cost Spanish classes in her Brooklyn neighborhood as a means of building community. She is interested in immigrant and refugee issues, scholastic achievement gaps, and using research and education to teach social justice.