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With
your tax deductible gift, we will continue to expand economic and
educational access and opportunities for women and girls until equality
is secured
for all.
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Save the Date!
ERA's Annual Luncheon
June 13, 2013
Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Equal Pay
Act with Keynote Speaker
Lilly Ledbetter
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Since
our founding in 1974, ERA has worked to protect and expand economic and
educational access and opportunities for women and girls through free
advice and counseling, representation in litigation, education and other
direct services.
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ERA Celebrates Passage of Key Family Leave and Pay Equity Laws
 | | House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi with ERA staff |
ERA celebrated the 20th anniversary of passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act and the 4th anniversary of the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act at
a community event last week along with co-hosts House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Congressman George Miller, the
Labor Project for Working
Families, MomsRising, the National Partnership for
Women & Families, and the San Francisco Labor
Council.
ERA's Executive
Director Noreen Farrell spoke at the event, lauding the laws as
"critical to the economic security of women and their families."
Farrell also urged unified support for better protections for workers,
including expansion of the FMLA to more workers in need of leaves and
passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act to close gaps in existing pay equity laws.
Read full ERA Press Release.
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ERA Launches Investigation of Bay Area Schools Across for Title IX Compliance
ERA is partnering
with Morrison Foerster LLP to ensure compliance with Title IX by Bay
Area schools. ERA has filed formal information requests with over
100 school districts in the San Francisco Bay Area, seeking records
about the school districts' compliance with Title IX, a federal law
that prohibits sex discrimination at schools. Press release.
The investigation was prompted by a troubling
report by the investigative unit of NBC Bay Area on October 30, 2012,
which revealed widespread ignorance of and non-compliance with basic
requirements of Title IX among 200 Bay Area schools, including its
requirement that schools designate a "Title IX coordinator" to receive,
investigate and act upon sex discrimination and harassment
complaints. The investigation reveals that principals at some Bay
Area schools were unaware of Title IX and could not identify the
school's Title IX coordinator or if the school even had one. Watch ERA Executive Director Noreen Farrell respond to the issue in this NBC Bay Area Report broadcast and to the initial investigative report about OB Whalley Elementary School in this NBC Bay Area Report broadcast.
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ERA Breaking Employment Barriers for Women
 | Mia Munro,
ERA Staff Attorney conducting the training. |
As part of
its Breaking Barriers Collaboration 2.0 Project, ERA kicked
off the new year with a training for women with criminal
conviction histories and their service providers about their
rights in re-entering the workforce following conviction.
ERA's Mia Munro led the training with Michelle
Rodriguez, staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project (NELP)
at the Women's Resource Center (run by the San Francisco Sheriff's
Department). The training is part of an ERA project dedicated to
eliminating the economic barriers facing formerly incarcerated women and
their families. ERA is working closely Arcelia Hurtado with the
National Center for Lesbian Rights on the project, which is generously
funded by the Levi Strauss Foundation.
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ERA is Recipient of Prestigious Skadden Fellowship
ERA
is thrilled to announce that the Skadden Foundation has awarded Joelle
Emerson a two-year fellowship to work as an attorney at Equal Rights
Advocates starting in September 2013. Joelle Emerson is a 2011
graduate of Stanford Law School and currently a judicial clerk for the
Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit. Joelle's project will focus on advocacy for
low-income immigrant women in Northern California who have experienced
sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. Joelle's project
will build upon ERA's Clinica La Voz,
a wrap-around services clinic for low income, immigrant women developed
by ERA in partnership with San Francisco Women Against Rape, Catholic
Charities and Worksafe.
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ERA Welcomes New Director of Development & Communications
Lemlem Rijio
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Photo by Chuck Revell
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A
senior development and communications professional, Lemlem comes to
Equal Rights Advocates with over a decade of work with leading Bay Area
educational, environmental and media institutions. A graduate of
UC Berkeley, Lemlem brings a passion for social justice advocacy and
women's empowerment that is rooted in her upbringing in Ethiopia.
She credits her mother as the ferocious force directing her political
and social orientation. Lemlem welcomes hearing from the community
that supports ERA at lrijio@equalrights.org.
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