While Colorado leads the nation in the number of women in the General Assembly, significant gaps still prevent women and girls in the state from achieving their full potential.
That was the finding of a report from staff members of the Women’s Foundation of Colorado, who have embarked on a monthlong state tour to share the results of a study conducted by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
They held a community conversation Wednesday evening at the Durango Discovery Museum. About 30 people attended, with only two men, Durango Mayor Dick White and Rep. Mike McLachlan, D-Durango, in the audience.
“Our demographics are changing,” said Cindy Willard, the foundation’s vice president for community initiatives and investments. “There are 2.5 million women in the state, and those under 18 are ethnically and racially more diverse than ever before.
“We also found that the economic downturn had a greater impact on women, and they are experiencing a slower recovery,” she said.
While the leadership category looked good at first glance, with 41 percent of the General Assembly being female, only one of the state’s nine-member congressional delegation is female, and Colorado has never had a female governor despite having given women the vote in 1893.
The report focused on five areas identified in a 2012 Listening Tour conducted by the foundation around the state, including in Durango: economic security and poverty, employment and earnings, educational opportunity, personal safety and women’s leadership.
The report is a dense 160 pages with statistics and analyses. Areas of greatest concern for Durangoans were access to child care, economic vulnerability of single mothers and physical vulnerability of women and girls.
“Our statistics on rape and violence were collected from a (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) study where women self-reported,” Willard said. “We think that’s more reliable than law-enforcement statistics, since they are crimes that are traditionally underreported, and the statistics are pretty profound.”
Colorado has the sixth-highest rate of rape in the nation, with 24 percent of women experiencing a rape at some time in their lives. Nationally, about 18 percent of women older than 18 reported having been raped. About 47 percent of Colorado women experienced sexual violence other than rape at some time in their lives.
“It’s an issue that impacts women much more than men,” Willard said.
Out of the 21,000 households in La Plata County, with an average poverty rate of 6.5 percent, 1,000 are headed by single mothers, with 27.5 percent at or below the poverty level. Access to affordable child care is one of their most significant challenges, Willard said, because child care is more expensive in Colorado and particularly lacking in resort communities.
There was hope amid the challenges.
“With La Plata County’s Children, Youth and Family Master Plan, we have a lot of dedicated people working to keep seeds planted, tilled and growing,” assistant county manager Joanne Spina said. “We don’t just have problems and gaps. We have a lot of talented people leading the way.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
On the Net
The Status of Women & Girls in Colorado: www.wfco.org or by request at summit@wfco.org.
“Losing Ground: The Cliff Effect,” a documentary about the loss of important benefits when women achieve even a minor increase in financial status, is streamed free at www.rmpbs/cliffeffect.
