Work-Life Balance

Bev Nidick, Women’s Issues Co-Chair

(June 2014) On June 23rd, President Barack Obama will convene the “White House Summit on Working Families”.  Its purpose is to focus on modernizing workplace policies and insure America’s future economic success.  AAUW representatives will be there calling for long-overdue updates to our nation’s workplace policies.

Not all laws in the United States have kept up with the increasing economic opportunities for women.  Wage gaps still persist, as well as a lack of care-giving, maternity, and sick leave benefits.  In a recent United Nations study, the United States is the only Western country, and one of only three in the world, that does not provide some kind of monetary payment to new mothers taking maternity leave from their jobs.  The other two are Oman, a monarchy in the Persian Gulf, and Papua New Guinea, where violence against women is so common that 60 percent of men acknowledge having committed rape.  Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand offer 14 to 18 weeks of paid maternity leave.  Under U.S. law, businesses are required to allow a new mother to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave.  AAUW’s advocacy efforts to update the 20-year-old “Family and Medical Leave Act” have so far been unsuccessful with legislation stuck in Congress.

For more information about this AAUW advocacy issue, please visit here.

Genetic Promise for Curing Cancer

by Cynthia Savell, Women’s Issues Chair

(March 2014) The goal of Dr. Carl June, who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania, is a cure for cancer. In his new treatment for the blood cancer Leukemia, he hopes to replace the costly and risky bone marrow transplants.

Three female patients with advanced leukemia have had complete remissions. Two of them have been well for more than 2 years. There were mixed results for other patients. Despite this, cancer experts say this treatment has tremendous promise because even in the early phase of testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases.

Big Pharma has shown immediate interest in the new treatment. Swiss drug company Novartis has committed $20 million to build a research center on the university campus. They anticipate research treatment for other cancers.as well.

To perform this leukemia treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s T cells, a type of white blood cell, and insert new genes that enable the T cells to kill cancer cells. The technique employs a disabled virus which is very good at carrying genetic material into T cells. The new genes program the T cells to attack B cells, a normal part of the immune system that turns malignant in leukemia. The altered T cells are dripped back into the patient’s veins, and, if all goes well, they multiply and start destroying the cancer. Healing begins with fever and chills as the body rids itself of the dead cells, then is brought back with injections of gamma globulin to end the inflammation and restore the normal function of the remaining B cells. This lasts about 2 weeks. In patients with lasting remission, the altered T cells remain in the bloodstream in smaller numbers, some lasting years.

Dr. June has now been awarded a $1.1 million dollar grant to begin research in immunotherapy to treat and hopefully eliminate the dreaded pancreas cancer.

The Affordable Care Act

by Bev Nidick, Women’s Issues Co-Chair

(February 2014) “To guarantee equality, individual rights and social justice for a diverse society, AAUW supports increased access to quality, affordable health care, and family planning services, including expansion of patient rights.”  So reads AAUW California’s Public Policy Priorities for 2013-2015. The Affordable Care Act (ACA)is supported by both California and national AAUW.

Kaiser Health News quick list of what is great about the Affordable Care Act , especially for women , includes the following:

The Affordable Care Act is supported by both National and California AAUW. Kaiser Permanente has identified these benefits:

• Young people may stay on their parents’ health policy with no rate increase until they turn 26.  This change has added coverage for more than three million young adultshave gained coverage since this provision went into effect in 2010.  Parents will be charged the same rates as when children were younger.
• Women are now entitled to free preventive care, including birth control including checkups, diabetes and HIV screenings for , contraceptives and family planning. Nearly 30 million women have benefitted from free preventive services this provision since 2012,   counseling.  The law requires plans to cover   However, on November 26, 2013 the Supreme Court decided that it would hear challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage requirement.  More than 40 for-profit companies have sued for the right to deny their employees access to this contraceptive coverage.  This effort is led by Hobby Lobby, a for-profit arts and crafts chain. These companies want the right to put themselves between women and their doctors.
• All FDA-approved birth control methods without co-pays are free. However, this benefit is being challenged in the courts.  AAUW National states that the challenge to this coverage is dangerous to women and everyone else and is asking AAUW members all over the country to take action on this issue by writing letters to the editors of local publications.
• Another benefit for women is that Maternity coverage is guaranteed, no matter what.Previously, only 12 percent of health plans sold on the individual market today included maternity coverage for.  Also, costs of breastfeeding equipment and breastfeeding counseling are covered without a co-pay.
• Breast cancer prevention medications that help prevent breast cancer will be fully covered.
• Under the ACA all individual health plans will have to must include 10 essential health benefits including maternity care, as well as All individual health plans must include hospitalization, prescription drugs, mental health services and preventive services.
• Women cannot may not be charged more than a man.  In most states insurers are currently allowed to charge women more than men for individual coverage.  According to the National Women’s Law Center, nonsmoking women were charged more than men who smoked in 30 percent of cases.  Such gender rating will be outlawed starting next year.
• No one can may be rejected for having a “pre-existing condition”, .  Today insurers can deny health insurance if you have a chronic condition such as asthma or diabetes.  If they do accept you regardless of these conditions, they can still charge you more for coverage.  Starting next year it will be illegal for insurers to charge more for these conditions them to penalize you this way.
• Health premiums may vary based on three factors only: age, where you live, and whether you are a smoker.

If you are a breast-feeding mom, the law requires health plans to cover the costs of breastfeeding equipment and breastfeeding counseling without a co-pay.

Access to the For information about Affordable Care Act insurance and information is obtained through visit Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, where nearly 500,000 California residents have enrolled as of December 2013.   We in AAUW California, our children and grandchildren, have a stake in seeing that health reform is successful in our state.  The law requires everyone to have health insurance, or incur a financial penalty.  In order for Covered California to be successful, People between the ages of 18 and 64 must sign up for the program,   Healthy people need to be part of the enrollment. those 65 and over will still have Medicare coverage.  Become informed and encourage your friends and family to learn more about Covered California.

(December 2013) American students face the ongoing problem of rising college costs. Colleges and universities face the problem of the huge expense of educating these students. In a recent article in Time Magazine (October 7, 2013), Massachusetts Institute of Technology reveals that, after providing financial aid, it costs three times as much to educate undergraduates as it receives in net tuition. MIT is an elite technology-intensive research university with a fairly high endowment and their aim is to push research to educate future “innovators in science and engineering.” Their expensive facilities and equipment make it difficult to subsidize a deficit caused by huge costs. They see the situation becoming ultimately unsustainable.

A possible solution to problems of expense for universities could be open online courses, or MOOCs, which could reach many thousands of students at a low cost. Many colleges are assessing such possibilities. MIT OpenCourseWare, started in 2002, has posted most of their course materials online free of charge, attracting 150 million learners from all over the U.S. and the world, in a platform launched with Harvard University.

Educators have found that digital technologies are good at teaching content. One professor, known for his excellent lectures, revealed that concepts that he had tried to teach were not well-applied by the students. By contrast, students taught through online exercises retained the concepts better and were better-prepared to put them into practice.

Another advantage of open online courses is their flexibility. Instead of holding on-campus classes during the weeks of the traditional semester or quarter, course content could be divided into smaller conceptual modules of instruction and testing. Digital learning allows students to study course material at any time, any day, and as often as needed, anywhere in the world.
Digital learning may help determine the benefits of brick and mortar colleges as well as help determine what colleges may need to do to advance learning in the future.

Could we blend digital and face-to-face teaching? The college experience might look quite different in ten or twenty years.

Perhaps the most important elements of a true education come from hands-on problem solving and team work since collaboration will be key for more and more research work in the future. Nevertheless, digital learning will be an important partner in future education.

Cynthia Savell, Co-Chair
Women’s Issues

(November 2013)

In  a  powerful documentary that I viewed recently entitled “Girl Rising,  Director Richard Robbins tells the stories of nine girls in countries such as Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Afghanistan, who face the challenge of how to attend school in the face of almost insurmountable odds. This positive and uplifting film stresses the importance of education for women and girls throughout the world.

In the United States we face our own set of educational challenges. Although the United States now boasts more women in colleges than men, there is still a large impediment to higher education for women and girls. It is now the cost. According to a recent Time magazine article, the average four year college tuition has risen to $72,000 for a public college and to $140,000 at a private institution. The one piece of good news in California is the recent approval by the California legislature of the Middle Class Scholarship which will slash student fees at UC and CSU campuses by up to 40 percent for California families making under $100,000 per year and 10 percent for families making under $150,000 per year.  What about the challenges of K-12 education in the Golden State? California educates more students than any other state, but economically-disadvantaged students (53%) and English learners account for a larger share of students in California than in the rest of the states.

According to the California Budget Project, California spent just $9,280 per student in 2012-13 versus $15,974 in New York state, ranking us above just two other states, Texas and Florida. We rank last nationally in the number of students per teacher, guidance counselors and librarians.  Good news? Maybe. As part of the 2013-14 budget agreement, Governor Brown signed legislation that restructures how the state provides dollars to schools. Although the new Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) makes the education funding system more transparent, rational, and equitable, the Department of Finance estimates that funding for schools will not be sufficient to implement these changes until 2020-21. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that to fully implement the LCFF in 2013-14 would cost $18 billion more that the state spent on K-12 schools in 2012-13. California’s financial support for schools lags its capacity. California spends a smaller share of its total personal income on K-12 schools than does the rest of the United States, 3.18 percent of personal income versus 4.04 percent in the rest of the United States.

To reach the same share of personal income that the rest of the United States spends on education, California would have to spend an additional $15.4 billion on K-12 schools. Bottom line? To meet the challenge of providing California’s students a high-quality education, the state needs to invest more of its financial resources in public schools.

Bev Nidick, Book Sale Chair 2013