Gender Equity (GE) Project goals are to bring about gender equity for girls by heightening their awareness of new opportunities through seminars at schools and corporations, as well as university-based island-wide conferences. The GE program aims to:

• Mentor and provide resources to young women and school districts across Long Island
• Eliminate gender-based inequities and encourage girls to pursue non-traditional jobs and sports and to give stakeholders the knowledge and tools to address inequity
• Support initiatives that address problems of harassment in schools or the workplace, or the rise in bullying and/or gang-related violence
• Provide lessons learned from women's history in education and employment to further support advocacy and empowerment, leadership and civic responsibility and to reaffirm that singly and as a group, girls and young women can make a difference.
  

Activities planned for 2009-2010 include: further exploration of opportunities for young women in non-traditional careers including Math, Science, Engineering and Technology, improving the connection between apprenticeship programs and opportunities in the trades for Long Island’s young women, cultivating the next generation of leadership among young women by encouraging them to consider public office, and educating Long Islanders about what steps to take to encourage girls from middle school through high school to help them pursue higher-paying careers where women are underrepresented.

Some of the projects initiated by the Fund’s Gender Equity in Education collaboration include:

Special event seminars are developed for girls ranging in topics from Financial Literacy to Media Impact Training. In early 2006, a special initiative entitled Smart Careers for Girls was implemented to encourage middle and high school girls to consider careers in math, science, technology and engineering. The 2007-2008 events addressed the vision and steps it takes to build bridges for girls from middle school to high school to college to successful career choices. This program has provided both on-site school forums as well as corporate on-site forums, connecting girls to actual career opportunities they might otherwise not consider. Our 2009 program, entitled Smart Careers for Girls III- Hot Topics, Hot Careers, Bright Futures for Girls!, will encourage recognition of non-traditional jobs/career choices for Long Island’s future generation of working women.

Our eight island-wide conferences on this topic have attracted a diverse audience of educators, parents, community leaders and students. Through these conferences, we have created a forum for sharing model gender equity strategies and provided attendees with a “blueprint” for replicating models in their own schools and communities. To keep the conferences current, a different focus has been adopted each time ranging from a focus on non-traditional career paths, encouraging tolerance, leadership development, preventing and addressing girls bullying, and self-esteem development to name a few. We are focusing this year on our special events series primarily, but future conferences to “train the trainers” are under consideration.

A National Science Foundation grant was awarded to Stony Brook University to study whether the interest of girls and young women in science, technology, engineering and math careers can be increased through exposing them to specific information about women in these fields. The grant supported Think Again...Girls Can!, a university-based collaboration which included LIFWG. The project produced a website (www.girlscan.org) and DVDs, which include interviews with women in science, technology, engineering and math. These media provide a means to disseminate information about scientists who love what they do, and who just happen to be women with rich professional and personal lives. The project website is accessible to all and DVDs have been distributed free of charge to schools and community organizations and are still available by contacting sclaase@lifwg.org.

The Fund continues to develop, compile, store and publicize statistics about Long Island women and girls to better educate the public about issues critical to gender equity. This information will allow us to track the improvements and challenges that impact women and girls on Long Island, to more effectively support advocacy efforts on their behalf, and will encourage girls to broaden their horizons when choosing careers to further support the Gender Equity initiative’s goal of a brighter future filled with opportunities for all the women and girls of Long Island.

As part of its GE programming, LIFWG also worked with well-known gender researcher and Fund supporter Charol Shakeshaft to helps schools and school districts perform institutional self-assessments of gender equity. This audit tool provided schools with the opportunity to pinpoint areas where additional work is needed to establish gender equitable learning environments.