Gender Equality and Women’s History Month: Q&A With the CA Commission on the Status of Women and Girls Director of External Affairs Darcy Totten

In honor of Women’s History Month and Gender Equality Month, we connected with the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, an agency that identifies and works to eliminate inequities in state laws, practices, and conditions that affect California’s women and girls. 

Established as a state agency with 17 appointed commissioners in 1965, the Commission regularly assesses gender equity in health, safety, employment, education, and equal representation in the military and the media. The Commission provides leadership through research, policy and program development, education, outreach and collaboration, advocacy, and strategic partnerships.

We spoke with Director of External Affairs Darcy Totten about the agency’s priorities for 2024, their work to address gender-based hate and violence, the ongoing fight for equal pay, and more. Read on to learn more.

*All of Darcy’s references to ‘women and girls’ include gender-expansive individuals (cis women and girls, trans women and girls, nonbinary individuals, gender-nonconforming individuals, genderqueer individuals, and any women or girl identified individuals).

* * *

Director of External Affairs Darcy Totten

Can you tell us about the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls and some of its top priorities for 2024? 

For nearly 60 years, the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls has, as an independent state agency, advocated for budget and policy efforts that prioritize the needs of women and girls in our state. Those needs include economic security, promoting gender equity, and evaluating public policy through a gender lens that recognizes that these systems were not originally built with women in mind.

According to our research, gender needs to be taken into consideration in all problem solving and economic innovation in California, and treated as a critical indicator of the state’s economic health. Equal pay is the first step in that process, and we could not ask for a more committed or inspirational leader in this campaign than Jenniefer Siebel Newsom, First Partner of California. We were excited to work with the First Partner to implement the California Equal Pay Pledge in 2019, and to celebrate the two-hundredth signatory just a few years later as we continue that partnership with the California Partner’s Project, and the Labor Workforce Development Agency.

The Commission continues to focus on policy advocacy focused on policies that ensure transparency, robust, disaggregated data collection and that support economic security, generational wealth building and upward mobility for California families.

We continue to push for gender equity in a state ecosystem that wasn’t created with women in mind. We do this by funding initiatives and public-private partnerships that elevate solution based practices to address intersectional gender-based inequities.

How does the Commission view and work to address the impacts of hate on women in California? 

We partner with other state agencies to offer insight and perspective on a range of issues that include gender based violence and hate, and we help organizations that offer impactful interventions and solutions in communities throughout the state.

Our Women’s Recovery Response Grant Program was able to support nearly 40 community-based organizations that counter violence against women and girls. These Women’s Recovery Response grantees, typically nonprofit community-based organizations, provide various wraparound services to counter violence against women, girls and gender-expansive people. Services include culturally and linguistically competent and responsive support for sexually exploited youth, and survivors of human trafficking and/or domestic violence.

 In what ways does intersectionality play a role in the Commission's work?

The Commission strives to be an integral voice for women and girls in our state who are negatively affected by systemic injustices that generate discrimination, marginalization and, all too often, rob communities of color, LGBTQIA+ people, and members of the disability community of their rights to safety, peace, and equal opportunities to thrive. For many years our work has been focused on reframing the conversation about women and bringing to light a more accurate representation of our challenges, roles, and contributions as more than half of California’s population. This means acknowledging that the women’s movement has a long history of racism, discrimination, and homophobia that continues to this day, and that part of our work for gender equity is to grapple with this history and to use every opportunity to do better, be better, and make the world better for all of us. For the sake of the women and girls of California that we exist to support, the Commission acknowledges the monumental task at hand, and we are committed to being intersectional leaders, committed to actively support the advancement of justice at every opportunity, in every room, and at every table.

Our work includes researching and understanding the status of women as core to our mission, recognizing the intersectionality of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, age, parenthood and more as critical indicators of health, overall well-being, opportunity, and prosperity. 

Our research, published in 2022 as the “California Blueprint for Women’s Pandemic Economic Recovery” took a deep look, through an intersectional lens, at the ways women were impacted by the pandemic. We found that women of color were the first to lose jobs and the last to regain them, and that among those women, Black and Latino immigrant women lost more jobs than other groups. We also found that unemployment affected poor women, and women without college degrees, hardest.

When we look at women’s representation in positions of power, between the entry level and the C-suite, the representation of women of color drops off by more than 75%! The persistent wage gap in California disproportionately impacts women of color at alarming levels and working mothers and women who are members of the LGBTQIA+ community and women with disabilities also experience greater disparities as compared to white women and women without children.

During the height of the pandemic, women with college degrees, who did not have children, and remained employed, saw their earnings rise. This is a clear indication that our systems were not built for working mothers to thrive.

These are just a few examples of the many ways we examine data which helps to guide solution-building efforts that take into account the unique needs and challenges of women whose experiences are impacted by multiple intersecting identities and points of disparity.

This year, the Commission also established a Youth Advisory Council to ensure that we were creating opportunities for youth to speak for themselves on the issues that impact them, and the futures they hope to create.

In recent years, we’ve seen significant increases in the number of hate crimes motivated by anti-Lesbian, anti-transgender, and anti-gender nonconforming bias. How does the Commission work to support the LGBTQ community, particularly trans and non-binary women who often bear the brunt of these attacks? 

As a proud queer woman, it has always been important to me to work for a world that is safer, more equitable, and more inclusive than the one that I grew up in.

The Commission is proudly inclusive of all women and girls, including gender-expansive individuals, cis women and girls, trans women and girls, nonbinary individuals, gender-nonconforming individuals, genderqueer individuals, and any women or girl identified individuals. We take an intersectional and inclusive approach to our grantmaking efforts, ensuring intentional efforts to include organizations that support the LGBTQ community, and we were proud to amplify and support efforts by the California Commission on Aging to survey LGBTQ community members statewide this year as part of an effort to include critical community-specific data in work on the Master Plan on Aging. We champion policy efforts that support and protect the LGBTQIA community, and work diligently to ensure that members of the community serving on staff and as appointment Commissioners can bring their perspective to assessments and solution-building efforts in a safe and supportive environment.

I think it is also critical to help people understand that the policy protections we see being rolled back across the country that impact the LGBTQIA community first, do not only impact us. The same policies and practices that were implemented to protect LGBTQIA children from harassment and bullying, also protect cisgender, heterosexual girls from harassment and bullying. The same policies and practices that protect women in the workplace, are the foundation for the protection of LGBTQIA people in the workplace. The right to bodily autonomy that was lost to women with the fall of Roe vs. Wade, has opened the door for the same loss to transgender individuals. The right for LGBTQIA people to see themselves represented in books and media that is currently under attack is rooted in similar efforts to ensure visibility for all people historically deliberately left out of public life.

We must work together to ensure a safer, more equitable future for everyone.  Women, as half the population, represent every possible intersection and identity. Therefore, it is critical that we acknowledge that all fights for equity and fairness are also our fight.

It’s Women’s History Month and Gender Equality Month. What is the Commission doing to celebrate and what are some key initiatives you’d like to call attention to this year?

After decades of research, advocacy, and leadership there is one thing we at the Commission know for certain – the structures of our government, media, infrastructure, education, and the landscape of our economy were not originally built with women in mind, and as such, despite recent efforts to move us all toward equality, nothing is truly gender neutral.

During Women’s History month we were very proud to announce several new partnerships and initiatives. We kicked off the month with the California Conference for Women, one of the largest opportunities to gather women leaders in California to learn from each other, skill share and hear from keynote speakers like Viola Davis and Margaret Atwood.

We were also proud to sponsor Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento’s month-long Women Build event, which brought more than 600 women out to participate in building the Cornerstone community, contributing to generational wealth building for women and families through safe and affordable home ownership.

On Equal Pay Day we joined First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and the California Partner’s Project to announce the release of the Equal Pay Playbook and to celebrate the 200 signatories of the California Equal Pay Pledge.

We announced a new partnership with the California Budget and Policy Center which will facilitate the updating of a 2024 Women’s Well-Being Index, to help break down gender barriers. The California Women’s Well-Being Index is a multifaceted, composite measure of women’s well-being that comprises five “dimensions,” consisting of six indicators each, which cover health, personal safety, employment and earnings, economic security, and political empowerment.  Together, these 30 values create an overall Women’s Well-Being Index score for each of California’s 58 counties. The data will also be featured in the Commission’s work, and the Commission is committed to sharing the information with its statewide partners, Commissioners, policymakers, and subject matter experts.

On the 22nd, we are looking forward to joining another new partner, the Center for the Advancement of Women at Mount Saint Mary’s University for the release of the Mount’s annual Report on the Status of Women and Girls in California™. The Commission has long been a contributor to this report and through this official partnership, the Center and the Commission will continue their work together to produce additional research, reports, and convenings focused on advancing gender equity for women and girls in California. 

Finally, I would acknowledge that heritage months, while important, come with their own challenges, particularly that we risk pigeonholing the diverse needs and concerns of half the population into a single celebratory month. While the acknowledging, thanking, and celebrating of women is important – especially during women’s history month – it shouldn’t start and end in March. And it also shouldn’t start and end with a thank you.

Don’t just thank us. Pay us. Promote us. Appoint us. Hire us. Vote for us. Women are essential to every aspect of our economy, society, and government.

None of it works without us.