First Lady's Initiatives
Underage Drinking
Dave and I believe that keeping our children safe and sober is a collective responsibility. I believe that our kids truly do want to grow up and succeed – but alcohol gets in their way. My particular focus is on the 9-15 age group; there is no dispute that those kids shouldn’t be drinking, and yet they are. Parents need to pay attention to the world in which our children are growing up. Kids are drinking more, and they are drinking earlier. Setting aside for a moment the very real moral and legal problems this causes, we are looking at a true public health emergency. We now have the scientific information available to fight it.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health, recently convened the first meeting of the Steering Committee on Underage Drinking Research and Prevention. I am enormously glad to be able to represent Wyoming on that committee as we all work toward solutions. I also work with the “Leadership to Keep Children Alcohol-Free” initiative established by the National Governors Association.
While it is important that we work together with other states, it is also important that we begin a conversation about what is good for Wyoming and what we can do here to protect Wyoming children. To that end, I have hosted a policy makers’ forum to address the issue, presented at the Governor’s Conference on Impaired Driving and spoken to elementary classes about the dangers of drinking.
But we can all do more. If you would like to help or have new ideas for ways to make a difference, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
For more information regarding this initiative, please see the following web site: http://www.wfli.org/.
Wage Equality
Wyoming cherishes its “equality firsts.”
We were the first state to grant women the right to vote. We had the first woman governor, the first woman justice of the peace, and the first all-woman jury. We honor this history, as we should, but it does not improve the quality of life for women today.
Wyoming is last in the nation on gender pay equity, with women earning 67 cents compared to every dollar earned by men.
This wage disparity statistic explains the high rate of single-parent families living in poverty. It robs Wyoming of human capital, as too many women choose to not work, or to leave Wyoming for better employment. The wage gap is a barrier that keeps too many women and girls from achieving economic self-sufficiency.
A study commissioned by the Wyoming Legislature tells us that a main reason Wyoming has such a large wage gap is because wages for Wyoming women are lower than the national average, while male wages are considerably higher than average. In short, we need to increase female wages.
How do we do this? The answer lies in a combined effort – by individuals, by employers, by nonprofits and by the state – to promote fair treatment, equal pay and equal economic opportunity for all Wyoming workers.
Among other things, we can:
Raise public awareness: The wage gap is real. It is hurting our families and our economy. Equal opportunity and equal pay will happen only when our leaders say it should.
Become informed and end discrimination: Some of the gap is due to illegal discrimination. Workers and employers must become better educated about their rights and responsibilities. Employers might consider a self-audit to make sure pay differences are not caused by discrimination. Wyoming must enforce its laws to stop discrimination.
Promote equal economic opportunity: As long as women remain in education, nursing, service, support and sales jobs, while men choose higher-paying mining, transportation and construction jobs, the wage gap will be a problem. Women should be persuaded to choose higher-paying occupations, and employers should allow them equal opportunity to enter these nontraditional jobs. Schools and parents can begin to break occupation stereotypes. Finally, Wyoming must continue its long-term efforts to diversify the economy so there are better career choices for women.
Change practices: Government, with its thousands of employees, can lead by examining and changing wage practices for appropriate jobs.
Become involved: We should support community and nonprofit efforts to end wage disparity. I am supporting the Wyoming Women’s Foundation, as an important endowed fund dedicated to help women in the Equality State achieve economic self-sufficiency.
Of course, for any of this to work, we need to know what “economic self-sufficiency” really means. The governor’s office is working on the creation of a Family Economic Self-Sufficiency (FESS) Standard, which calculates the real cost of living for different types of households.
The FESS Standard is a tool that can change the way lawmakers and administrators develop and enact policy. By explaining the actual wage required to live without subsidies, the standard can be used to guide all kinds of policies, from job training to tax policies to child care to economic development or educational funding.
It accounts for varying costs in family size and composition and by geographic location. For each county or sub-county area in Wyoming, a FESS Standard will be calculated for up to 70 different family types, considering such costs as housing, childcare, food, transportation, health care, taxes and tax credits. For me, success with this standard is to have a tool that is useful for individuals, for policymakers and for state agencies. Failure would be another study that sits on the shelf gathering dust.