Gender Equity Commission recommends city address police violence, pay inequality
The city’s Gender Equity Commission issued several policy recommendations as a follow-up to its findings last year that revealed Black Pittsburghers, particularly Black women, would find better health and economic outcomes just by leaving town.
The body tasked with redressing gender discrimination on a local level is recommending that the Peduto administration consider nearly a dozen recommendations, including applying a gender lens to budgetary decisions, re-centering early childhood education as a priority and supporting local women-owned businesses — especially as the COVID-19 pandemic “has split wide-open the longstanding inequities in our city.”
“In Pittsburgh, those protesting police violence in this moment have been forced to risk contracting the corona virus while facing additional police violence,” wrote Jessie B. Ramey, the commission’s chair and director of Chatham University’s Women’s Institute, in the report’s introduction. “We also see that our frontline and ‘essential’ workers are so often women and people of color who are jeopardizing their lives, frequently because they can’t jeopardize their livelihoods. The pandemic has exposed the massive quantity of unpaid care-giving and domestic labor that falls disproportionately on women.
“... Pittsburgh will need to be unflinchingly honest about both its past and present. The city must be bold, creative, and committed above all to those most impacted by the dual crises of racist violence and the pandemic. We can’t just ‘get back to normal,’ ” she continued.
Other recommendations in the June 17 report titled “Building an Equitable New Normal: Responding to the Crises of Racist Violence and COVID-19” include:
• Addressing police violence immediately.
• Collecting disaggregated data, including about gender, for all city departments.
• Prioritizing resources for women, girls, transgender and gender diverse people. The resources would include federal emergency relief grants for essential health services, including sexual and reproductive health services and genderbased violence prevention programs.
• Implementing and updating the city’s “Rooney Rule with Results” to expand equity goals in hiring and promotions.
• Promoting pay equity in hiring by requiring pay transparency and banning prior salary history questions.
• Strengthening existing paid sick leave legislation and legislate paid safe leave.
• Piloting a universal basic income program.
The policy recommendations come months after the commission’s September “Pittsburgh’s Inequality
Across Gender and Race” study that compared Pittsburgh with 89 comparable cities across 40 categories and found that Black women in Pittsburgh face higher rates of maternal mortality and poverty and lower rates of employment and college readiness, among other quality-of-life barriers.
“The mayor thanks the commission for this important report and will study its conclusions closely,” said Timothy McNulty, Mayor Bill Peduto’s spokesman, in response to the recommendations.
The recommendations and the 2019 study can be accessed at https://pittsburghpa.gov/gec/index.html.