Rachel Sadon
All eyes in D.C. are on a proposal to guarantee workers 16 weeks of paid time off to care for a new child, help an ailing family member, or recover from their own illness—a bill that would catapult the District well beyond any state in terms of leave policy. In the meantime, though, the District of Columbia Office of Human Rights is reminding Washingtonians of the strong protections that are already in place specifically for women in the city.
OHR is in the midst of a two-month campaign to promote gender equality, which includes a series of ads in the Metro system and a TEDx conference focused on the issue. The office handles a variety of workplace discrimination complaints, including race and disability—but the largest number of employment discrimination complaints that they received last year had to due with sex. At a clip of nearly two a week, women have been coming to OHR with tales of lower salaries, fewer promotions, lack of access to spaces to breastfeed, and so on.
But those women knew, or suspected, they were entitled to more, as a matter of both federal and District law. Among those protections are a regulation that allows for breastfeeding in all places and a recent law that requires reasonable accommodations be made for pregnant women in the workplace.
“Despite immense progress in the workplace and beyond, women continue to face inequalities when it comes to pay, promotions, and issues related to pregnancy and breastfeeding,” OHR Director Mónica Palacio said. “Fortunately in the District we have strong protections for women, and this campaign aims to ensure both women and employers are well aware of our civil rights laws and how they protect both women and men from discrimination.”
The #WomenAreEqualDC ads, featuring seven women, will remain up in the Metro until November 5. “We definitely thought about racial diversity and diversity of experiences and age,” when choosing the images, said OHR spokesman Elliot Imse. “Diverse gender identity was important as well.” One of the women featured is transgender, but OHR doesn’t call attention to that fact on the ad.
“There’s been a lot of campaigns recently focusing on transgender people as transgender, which is awesome and needs to be done,” Imse said. “But a transgender woman is also a woman just like everyone else—she doesn’t always need that extra identifier. She faces discrimination because of her gender identity, yes. But she also starts to experience sexism and other types of discrimination that women experience generally.”
The transgender woman featured in the campaign, Sarah McBride, happens to be one of the impressive panelists that are weighing in on the theme of gender quality at a TEDxMidAtlantic salon—EVE: Everyone Values Equality—taking place next month. Other speakers include Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress; Brigid Schulte, the director of The Good Life Initiative at New America; and Lisa María Mallory, the CEO of the District of Columbia Building Industry Association.
“The idea is to really have these women speakers give talks that really talk about equality and women’s rights and the future of the women’s rights movement from their perspective,” Imse said. “We hope it will give people an ‘a-ha moment’ or an action item that they can walk way from this and feel like they can make a difference.”
The TEDxMidAtlantic salon EVE: Everyone Values Equality will be held on November 16 from 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Tickets are free, but registration is required.
