Women’s groups all over the country are mobilizing to create a coalition for Women’s Health and Economic Rights (HER rights) as the election of 2012 approaches. Called HERvotes, the group aims to promote awareness about the programs and laws currently in danger that help women achieve economic and social stability. The group’s manifesto is ” to educate and engage more women to use their voices and their votes to urge lawmakers who seek to represent them to: stop the attacks on historic advances for women, preserve successful policies, respect women’s contribution to the economy, and act on jobs at livable wages and equal pay for our families’ economic security”.
HERvotes has just released a list of the top ten revolutionary laws that gave women an unprecedented level of security, but are in danger of disappearing or being weakened due to budget cuts and the temperature of national politics. At federal, state, and local levels, these include the Social Security Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Title X (the National Family Planning Program), the Equal Pay Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Affordable Care Act. You can view the full list here. In particular, women of color will be the hardest hit should the desired cuts make it through the system. Melanie Campbell, CEO and president of Black Women’s Roundtable, states “the National Senior Citizens Law Center recently released a report that the majority of single women of color rely on social security for 90 percent of their income.”
On Thursday, August 25, HERvotes will launch a “blog carnival” in which many organizations will discuss and promote women’s political needs and a get-out-the-vote initiative. Linda Hallman, executive director and CEO of the Association of American University Women (AAUW) seems to have summed it up best– “From Women’s Equality Day 2011 to Election Day 2012, we will be reaching out to women and urging them to talk to the other women in their lives – their moms, their sisters, their daughters, their friends, their neighbors and their coworkers – so that we can increase voter turnout and bring forward women’s voices in the national discussion on jobs, health care, education and family economic security.” Collegiettes™, this means you!