White House Council on Women and Girls Update:

The White House

Dear friends,

Happy Women’s History Month! We hope this message finds you well. It has been an exciting and busy time here at the White House Council on Women and Girls.

Earlier this week, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama announced a new whole-of-government initiative called Let Girls Learn, which expands the Administration’s efforts to help adolescent girls around the world attend and complete school. And just over a week ago, the First Lady hosted an event to honor the women of the Civil Rights Movement. If you haven’t had a chance yet, please be sure to visit the new White House Women in STEM website, highlighting some wonderful #WomenInSTEM.

All month long, the Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, Valerie Jarrett, will be tweeting about inspiring women in history. Share the women who inspire you by tweeting about them using the hashtag #WomensHistoryMonth, and we’ll feature some of our favorite submissions throughout the month.

Thank you for all that you do!

Best regards,

The White House Council on Women and Girls

Latest News and Administration Highlights

Let Girls Learn
On Tuesday, the President and First Lady announced that the White House is ramping up its efforts to Let Girls Learn, with a new initiative focused on supporting girls’ education around the world.

Watch the President and First Lady’s remarks here:

Women of the Civil Rights Movement
On February 20, First Lady Michelle Obama delivered remarks at “Celebrating Women of the Movement” — an event honoring some of the women of the Civil Rights Movement.

In her remarks, Mrs. Obama explained that “education is the single-most important civil rights issue that we face today.”

Watch her full remarks here:

Women in STEM
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy recently launched a page dedicated to highlighting some incredible #WomenInSTEM. Check out their stories, and get Women in STEM fact sheets, latest news updates, speeches, and other useful resources here.

Stay Connected

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This week, we’ve got a huge opportunity to help end deforestation and human rights abuses for fabric production, and we need your help.

This week is Fashion Week in New York, a time where the biggest luxury designers in the world come together to show off their new collections. It’s a big deal in the fashion world, and that makes it a key moment for our Out of Fashion Campaign. We need to make absolutely sure that part of the discussion and buzz around Fashion Week this year is not just about who’s wearing or showing what, but about how to avoid the devastating impacts that the production of rayon and other fabrics and clothing produced from wood fiber in the form of dissolving pulp is having on forests and communities in places like Indonesia, Canada and Brazil.

The impacts of fabrics made from dissolving pulp, made by companies like Royal Golden Eagle Group’s Sateri Ltd., have gone under the radar for years. It’s time for the world’s most fashionable brands to pay attention and be leaders. Luxury fashion shouldn’t come at the price of land stolen from Indigenous Peoples and the loss of endangered forests. Demand that high fashion not only sets the trends for style, but that it also demonstrates leadership on environmental and social issues in the materials it uses.

Add your voice. Together, we can move the fashion industry forward.

For the forests,
Christy Tennery-Spalding
http://www.ran.org/

Richard Eskow

13 Questions: About Greece, Europe, Austerity – and Us

Every day brings more headlines in the European debt drama: “Greece elects anti-austerity government.” “Greek Finance Minister says he won’t negotiate with the ‘Troika.’” “Anti-austerity movements gain ground across Europe.” What’s behind these stories? What does the future hold? What, if anything, are the implications for the United States?

Capital & Main Takes On Inequality

California news site Capital & Main launches month-long series on “how economic inequality is transforming California, and what can be done to rebuild our vanishing middle class.”

Greece v. Europe

Europe squeezes Greece. NYT:“The central bank decided that it would no longer accept Greek government bonds as collateral for loans, saying that it was not confident the country could meet its bailout requirements. The move raises the stakes for Greece, indicating that the European Central Bank, at least, is not prepared to bend its rules to accommodate the country’s newly elected government.”

Greece doesn’t budge. Bloomberg:“The government ‘remains unwavering in the goals of its social salvation program, approved by the vote of the Greek people,’ according to a Finance Ministry statement issued overnight.”

House GOP v. Senate GOP

Party split over immigration and funding Homeland Security. Politico:“What has caused the most consternation among top Republicans is a palpable fear that their party could incur a political backlash if the impasse causes a shutdown of an agency so essential to national security if no deal is reached before the Feb. 27 deadline … [But a]nything less than a full-fledged battle would spark a revolt from the right.”

“Democrats feel they have political leverage and have shown no sign of backing down,”reports The Hill.

Can Republicans even agree on a budget? WSJ:“Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.), who heads the House Budget Committee, has promisedto offer a proposal that balances the budget in 10 years, which would require much deeper spending cuts than what many Democrats—and possibly those Republican senators who face re-election next year—will agree to…”

Trio of Republicans propose actual replacement for Obamacare. NYT:“[The bill] would halt the expansion of Medicaid and scale back subsidies for middle-income people to buy private insurance … [It would] reduce federal regulation of insurance policies [and] no longer require insurance policies to include coverage for maternity care … Their plan includes a potentially explosive proposal: Workers would have to pay federal income tax on the value of employer-provided health benefits that exceed certain annual thresholds — $12,000 for individuals and $30,000 for families.”

Nothing new from Jeb. W. Post’s Jim Tankersley:“…Jeb Bush’s speech on Wednesday before the Detroit Economic Club … was the highest-profile example to date of a Republican presidential hopeful embracing economic inequality and middle-class stagnation as problems that define America. What it was not — at least on its face — was a break with orthodox conservative thinking about the economy.”

Conservatives In States Target Workers

IL Gov. Bruce Rauner aims to weaken labor. NYT:“[Gov. Rauner] said on Wednesday that the state should ban some political contributions by public employee unions and allow local ‘right to work’ laws … reporters tried repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, to get the longtime Assembly speaker, Michael J. Madigan, to voice a firm opinion about the governor’s suggestions on right-to-work laws.”

TN legislature rebuffs GOP governor who wanted to expand Medicaid. The Hill:“[Gov. Bill] Haslam, a Republican, failed to garner enough support among members of his own party. Only three of the 10 Republicans on the [Senate] Health panel voted for the plan; the final vote was 7 to 4 against expansion.”