The 2022
Voting Guide
How to Vote For Gender Equity in the 2022 Elections
The United States is sitting on a $3.1 trillion economic opportunity: gender equity. By closing our country’s gender equity gap, we have the potential to expand the economic pie and bend the arc of history toward inclusion. One of the most critical factors in shaping the future of gender equity as we approach the 2022 elections lies at the heart of government policy:
#gendermainstreaming
Gender mainstreaming—the practice of disaggregating the effects of public policy by gender— gives us direct insight into how our society's rules and regulations impact different genders differently.
Gender mainstreaming is not about adding “women’s issues” to the mix. It is an intuitive and effective means to ensure everyone’s experiences and needs play a role in policy creation, implementation, and evaluation.
Click an Election Issue to Learn More
1.
Social Security
Social Security is facing an impending $13.2 trillion cash shortfall between 2034 and 2094. We could cut the shortfall by 35%, or $4.7 trillion, by closing the gender pay gap. How?
Download the Voting Guide to learn more.
2.
Healthcare
Our healthcare system leaves behind thousands of vulnerable people every year by overlooking men and mental health in the healthcare conversation. 79% of all suicides in the US are from men. Teenage boys are three times more likely to die from suicide than teenage girls.
Download the Voting Guide and discover how we can reform healthcare so that it’s equitable for all.
3.
Higher Education
Students and graduates across the country are grappling with a collective $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. Women shoulder a disproportionate majority of this debt: they are 57% of undergraduates yet hold 67% of all student debt.
The gender pay gap expands the time it takes for women to pay back their loans by an average of 1.9 years (it’s longer for women of color). We can prevent student loan debt from snowballing into our next economic crisis and restore higher education’s reputation of excellence. We must act now.
Download the Voting Guide and vote ‘yes’ for equitable access to higher education.
4.
The Middle Class
The middle class lost its spot as America’s economic majority in 2015. Manufacturing as a share of US jobs fell from 25% in 1970 to 8.5% in 2019. As advanced technologies displace workers across industries, a rising cohort of breadwinner moms is entering the labor force.
Today, women are the breadwinners in 40% of US households with children. How can the US migrate from a manufacturing economy to an information economy while ensuring nobody gets left behind?
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Download the Voting Guide to learn more about what the Fourth Industrial Revolution means for our country and our middle class.
5.
Criminal Justice
Women, especially mothers and women of color, face greater challenges to post bail due to the gender pay gap, and they often find themselves behind bars before ever receiving a fair trial. In 2018 alone, 80% of jailed women were mothers. Children of incarcerated mothers are more susceptible to violence, victimization, chronic health conditions, and future incarceration than children with incarcerated fathers.
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Download the Voting Guide to find out how we can close the gender jail gap and keep it from hindering our economy and future generations of Americans.
6.
Immigration
For every one euro spent on refugees, Europe’s economy will grow by approximately 1.84 euros within five years. The US also stands to benefit from investing in refugee resettlement, especially as we face a labor force shortage of 5 million workers.
Download the Voting Guide to learn how equitable refugee resettlement can be a win-win-win situation.
7.
International Trade
Even import taxes have gender bias. 79% of footwear imports and 86% of apparel imports are gender-classified. Men’s apparel receives an average 11.9% import tax while women’s apparel receives an average 15.1% import tax. Because businesses frequently pass import taxes onto consumers, women are more likely to pay higher prices for their clothing than men.
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Read the Voting Guide to discover two alternative approaches to end inequitable import taxes.
8.
Women represent only 19% of the financial service sector’s c-suite roles and only 8.1% of named executive officers in the space. Yet, studies have shown that women traders and personal investors outperform male traders and personal investors. Reform on Wall Street should include increasing the representation of women in finance because high-stakes financial agreements need the unique capabilities of men and women.
Learn how gender equity can help prevent financial imbalances from spiraling into crises akin to 2007 and 2008. Download the Voting Guide today.
9.
Strengthening Democracy & Election Integrity
The 19th Amendment granted primarily white women the right to vote. Black women, Latinas, Native American women, and Asian women remained disenfranchised for another 45 years until the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Many people are still disenfranchised to this day.
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Discover how to move forward with the great experiment of American democracy. Download the Voting Guide.
10.
LGBTQ+ Rights
A female candidate who is perceived as being part of the LGBTQ+ community by her resume alone is 30% less likely to get an interview. Ensuring the inclusion of LGBTQ+ employees is an economic imperative with the potential to add $9 billion to the US economy.
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Download the Voting Guide and vote ‘yes’ for Equity for All ®. (Plus, learn how closing the gender pay gap could reduce the poverty rate for lesbian couples.)
11.
Venture Capital & Entrepreneurship
Will the US maintain our reputation of innovative excellence in the Fourth Industrial Revolution? The answer hinges on our ability to achieve gender equity in the entrepreneurship and venture capital ecosystem. In 2021, a mere 2% of VC funds went to female-founded teams.
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Download the Voting Guide to learn how we can rid entrepreneurship of gender inequity.
12.
GDP & Economic Growth
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has served as a barometer of economic success, and our elected officials use GDP to inform policy decisions. But, GDP fails to capture the value of digital assets and cannot measure levels of well-being. How is the economy working for women? How is it working for men?
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Download the Voting Guide to discover how our country can best prepare for success in the digital economy.
13.
Binding Arbitration
Nearly 40% of US employees have binding arbitration clauses in their employment agreements. That means that if those employees face harassment or discrimination in the workplace, they cannot take their claim to public court; they must resolve their claim through a private arbitration process. Binding arbitration overrides labor law protections and often forces employees to choose between economic security and physical safety.
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Find out how to support equitable alternatives to binding arbitration by downloading the Voting Guide.
14.
Climate Change
Following Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, 41,000 women lost their jobs while 8,000 men gained employment. Women and children are 70% of America’s poor, and those living in poverty will feel the effects of climate change the most. For the 16 million US women living in poverty, climate change poses a threat to personal and economic security.
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Climate talks have largely left out women even though women are and will continue to shoulder the burden of its impact. We need to ensure the needs, experiences, and perspectives of women are heard at the climate table.
Download the Voting Guide to learn more.
15.
Foreign Policy
Two objectives of US foreign policy are finding solutions to complex international problems and promoting human rights. One of the most promising avenues to promote human rights and provide security is gender equity. Including women in conflict resolution processes would make the final agreement 64% less likely to fail.
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Download the Voting Guide for more on how gender mainstreaming US foreign policy would create a more equitable world for everyone.
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