As a grantmaker at The New York Community Trust, a big part of my job is finding ways to better understand the policies and systems that affect the communities we serve. One way my colleagues and I do this is by periodically reviewing our grantmaking strategies to make sure we’re supporting work that actively addresses inequities, meets service needs, and sets the stage for positive, long-term change in the city.
I recently completed this process for The Trust’s gender equity program. As I reviewed research and interviewed experts from nonprofits, academia, and the government, it was clear that girls, women, and gender expansive people continue to face pervasive gender-based discrimination and violence— affecting their economic mobility, health, and intimate relationships.
More broadly, recognizing that, in recent years, people have begun to define gender more expansively—and that the nonprofits serving them have done the same—we revised our guidelines so that our grants explicitly support not only girls and women, but also gender-expansive people. (“Gender expansive” is a term that includes transgender people and those who identify as nonbinary, which means they don’t identify as a man or woman.)
This led me to four main areas of focus for our new strategy: developing youth leadership, addressing gender based wage gaps, improving services for survivors of gender-based violence, and improving reproductive, maternal, and mental health care—including advocacy to expand access to high-quality, age-appropriate sexual health education. These areas are, of course, interrelated. For example, recent studies show that early access to sexual health education helps young people of all genders learn to recognize the characteristics of, and develop, healthy intimate relationships. And some of our youth leadership grants have involved young people in campaigns to raise awareness about issues like teen dating violence and employment discrimination.
Programs that offer leadership and advocacy training to girls and gender-expansive young people are a powerful way to support gender equity and advance systemic change. Participants get the opportunity to speak out about issues they care about and directly influence policies that affect them. They also develop transferable skills that will serve them throughout their lives.
As these young people move into the workforce, they are likely to face economic discrimination. Women and gender-expansive people continue to make less money than men, even as young women finish high school and attend college at higher rates than young men. In NYC, women earn an average of 90 cents for every dollar a man earns. For Black and Latina women, that number plummets to 57 and 54 cents, respectively.
Meanwhile, child care remains unaffordable for 80 percent of families in the city—and studies show that women are twice as likely as men to leave jobs or reduce working hours because they can’t find or pay for reliable child care.
To advance gender equity, we also need to address inequities in health care. For example, studies show that Black women in New York are nine times more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than white women. This is a consequence of racial bias—it cuts across income and education level—as well as a lack of access to quality medical services, paid time off, and other important supports. At The Trust, we want to encourage service providers to consider gender- and race-based differences in health and mental health outcomes and provide services that address those disparities.
Our new strategy will help guide our grantmaking to support programs designed not only to meet today’s needs, but also to work towards building a city, region, and hopefully world, that offers equal opportunities, care, and safety to all.
