Wider Opportunities for Women

Wider Opportunities for Women is a Non-Profit Organization founded in 1964, and has ever since helped women learn to earn, with programs emphasizing literacy, technical and non-traditional skills, the welfare-to-work transition and career development. Since 1964, WOW has trained more than 10,000 women for well paid work in the DC area.

WOW leads the National Women’s Workforce Network, a network comprised of organizations committed to increasing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_workforce|women in the workforce] and better access to well-paid work, and it includes the Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Project ( FESS) and the Elder Economic Security Initiative (EESI).

History

In its early days, WOW received much of its support from women in key government positions, and together, they worked to improve opportunities for women employed by the federal government.

WOW was able to place women in nontraditional jobs because of an amendment to Executive Order 11246, issued by President Lyndon Johnson. The order included women in the affirmative action requirements that federal contractors had to meet, thus giving them real leverage in persuading employers to open up traditionally male jobs to women.

Most of WOW’s programs were publicly funded, predominately by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) and the Vocational Education Act. When the legitimacy of our CETA-funded training program for nontraditional employment was challenged on the grounds of alleged reverse discrimination against men, a joint effort was made to include sex-equity language in public employment and training legislation. This provision was later referred to as the “WOW paragraph.”

The Family Economic Self Sufficiency (FESS)

The Family Economic Self-Sufficiency (FESS) Project engages in organizing, research, and advocacy – using the common framework of economic self-sufficiency – to design, implement and advocate for programs and policies that move low-income families toward economic independence. The cornerstone of the project is the state-specific Self-Sufficiency Standard. WOW’s Self Sufficiency Standard a tool that calculates how much income a working family needs to meet their basic expenses of housing, child care, health care, transportation and taxes, based on geography and the number of adults and children in the family. The self-sufficiency framework can be utilized to strengthen organizing, analysis, and advocacy for accountable and equitable economic development choices. Today, there are 36 Standards complete with state-wide coalitions representing over 2,000 community-based organizations, state and local government, employers, and labor. [ [ [http://www.sixstrategies.org/sixstrategies/selfsufficiencystandard.cfm FESS- Six Strategies - Self-Sufficiency Standard ] ] ]

The Self Sufficiency Standard adds perspective on what self-sufficiency truly means, as it brings new understandings on the nature of poverty. [ [ [http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0109/010907.htm Peacework Back Issues | Peacework - Sept. 2001 - Self-Sufficiency Standard: A New Tool for Evaluating Anti-Poverty Policy ] ] ]

Elder Economic Security Initiative ( EESI)

Wider Opportunities for Women’s Elder Economic Security Initiative (EESI) seeks to build economic security for elders through a multi-pronged approach that includes organizing, advocacy and research. WOW is currently partnered with four states, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania to launch the EESI project.

For the EESI project, WOW partnered with the Gerontology Institute at the |University of Massachusetts Boston and developed the Elder Economic Security Standard (Elder Standard) that serves as a measure of income that elders require to meet basic expense to age in place, including meeting their housing and health care costs while maintaining their independence in the community. [ [http://www.maoamass.org/MAOA/programs.htm Programs and othercollaboratives at MAOA Mass, USA ] ]

The Elder Standard is a tool that provides important information to policy makers, aging advocates and others as they develop policies and programs to promote the economic independence of elders. [ [ [http://www.geront.umb.edu/eess/eessma.jsp The Elder Economic Security Standard ] ] ]

The Elder Economic Security Standard:

- Serves as an educational tool for elders
- Provide a foundation for developing a state policy agenda and a platform for engaging in national advocacy.
- Serve as an educational tool for adult children of elders
- Serve as an education tool for “boomers” and younger adults
- Provide a framework for analyzing impacts of local, state, and federal public policies and policy proposals in such areas as housing, retirement security, health, long-term care, and taxes.
- Provide important new information to illustrate the basic costs seniors face and how their financial security is affected when their life circumstances change
- Serve as counseling tool for those working with elders who decide to go back to school for additional skill sets and/or decide to open up their own micro enterprise
- Provide a framework for local community planning and evaluations for seniors in such areas as transportation, housing, health, long-term care, taxes, etc.

References

External links

* [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch00315 Wider Opportunities for Women Records.] [http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles Schlesinger Library,] Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.