Women’s Fund shares results of 2023 gender equity report

Date: 11/27/2023

SPRINGFIELD — The Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts, a nonprofit organization that fuels progress toward gender equity, has completed and shared its 2023 research report, titled “Gender Equity in Western Massachusetts: The Status of Women, Girls, Transgender, Nonbinary, and Gender-Diverse Adults and Youth.”

This report was prepared by the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts and funded by Women’s Fund donors, along with grants from Feeding America and The Beveridge Family Foundation.
The report, which came out in September, is the Women’s Fund’s third commissioned report since 2013.
Women’s Fund CEO Donna Haghighat noted that the 2013 report was just the status of women, the 2019 report included girls, and this time, it is called a gender equity report, including transgender and nonbinary individuals.

She explained that the report includes data on the four counties of Western Massachusetts — Berkshire, Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin — and includes areas such as economic security, employment and earnings, reproductive justice, health and wellbeing, poverty and opportunity, violence and safety, political participation and demographics.

Haghighat said they have a data microsite, data.mywomensfund.org, which breaks down these eight categories.

To inform the public of the research, presentations took place in each of the four counties. On Nov. 6, there was a presentation at the East Forest Park Branch Library in Springfield.

Haghighat said the report included some information on an economic security project they have been doing about women in Springfield.

According to Haghighat, some of the more “shocking” findings were that 195 women were surveyed, and the median income was $15,000 and over 80% of them are mothers.

“That’s a really horrible situation where they’re not even making enough for one person, never mind a family,” Haghighat said.

In terms of poverty and opportunity in Springfield, she noted that there is “a lot of room for progress.”

She shared that one of the “exciting” parts of the key findings report for her is that it is framed to show what the challenges are, what the opportunities are and what actions people can take if they are reading about this.

In employment and earnings, Haghighat said Hampden County is the third worst of the four counties, in the fact that a woman makes 85 cents to every dollar a man makes. She added that for Black, Indigenous and women of color, the rates are even worse.

“The opportunity for action around that is to advocate for wage equity and continue advocating for efforts to address the cliff effect,” she shared.

Haghighat explained that the cliff effect is if somebody is already on public assistance and they have a job in which they receive an opportunity for a promotion or get a better job, they are penalized by the system in the sense that they are then no longer eligible for the public benefits and yet the amount of the raise or the new job does not make them whole from where they were.

She went on to say that they looked at leadership, including educational leadership in schools. “In Hampden County, we’re the second worst in terms of the percentage of women who are female superintendents. Only 46% of superintendents are women as opposed to Franklin County, 58% are.”

For percentage of female principals, Haghighat said Hampden County does better, and falls second with 64%.

She noted that the percentage of teachers that are women is much higher in all four counties and in Hampden County, it is 74%.

In terms of health and wellbeing, Haghighat said they saw a lot of mental health issues for the youth in Hampden County, particularly youth of color, LGBTQIA+ and youth with disabilities.

Some signs of progress in Hampden County is that the teen birth rate has been dropping, which Haghighat said is “very good news.” It went from 16.8% to 13.5%.

Another highlight she shared is, “We have our first and only woman of color elected official from Chicopee, [Democratic state Rep.] Shirley Arriaga. In all of Western Mass., she’s the one woman of color. It’s a sign of progress. It’s certainly not enough, but it’s definitely progress.”

Haghighat noted that Arriaga attended the Springfield event, along with state Rep. Orlando Ramos (D-Springfield), state Sen. Adam Gomez (D-Springfield) and state Rep. Carlos Gonzalez (D-Springfield).

Haghighat said there are also places within the report where “things are not measuring up.” For instance, teen birth rates are declining but looking at adequate prenatal care by county, in Hampden County in 2016, the report was over 81% of people were saying they were receiving adequate prenatal care by county. However, in 2020 in Hampden County, it has dropped to 73.6%. “Some things are going on there in terms of not receiving adequate care, especially among Latina girls in the region,” she said.

During the presentations, Haghighat said they explained who the Women’s Fund is, why this research matters, and brought in lead researchers to share the findings. They gave a presentation and went over each of the areas and tailored it to the regions in which they were presenting.

Haghighat said about 35 people attended the Springfield event and asked “great questions.”

The final presentation took place in Franklin County on Nov. 29. Although it was tailored to Franklin County, Haghighat said it will be recorded and posted online for people to understand how this information is presented.

The full report can be viewed and downloaded at data.mywomensfund.org. Haghighat said there are two versions of the full report — one is key findings and the other is the protracted report that researchers and other nonprofits can use for statistics.

To learn more about the Women’s Fund, visit mywomensfund.org.