US Women’s Caucus at the UN Briefs

US Women’s Caucus at the UN has prepared several valuable briefs in preparation for CSW68 in 2024. 

The others are posted on the website:  uswomenscaucus.org.  Please check out the others there.  We’re grateful for this valuable work by the US Women’s Caucus team , including Pam Perraud, a D10 Zontian

Dear CSW friends,

    

The US Women’s Caucus has composed a series of Gender and Poverty Briefs in preparation for CSW 68 in March 2024.  We have researched several subtopics that we hope will be part of the discussion at the CSW, including recommendations we would like to see in the Agreed Conclusions.  

     Here are the final two Briefs on race and older women/widows. Our researchers found that US women of color have the highest poverty rates, including Native women at 21%, Black women at 18.8%, and Latinas at 17%, compared to 8.9% of white women.  Women of color are more likely to work part-time in low-wage, “women’s work” occupations that do not carry health or pension benefits.  They juggle work hours with childcare responsibilities.  At retirement age, women of all races have fewer resources than men due to the cumulative effects of the gender wage gap, occupational segregation into lower-paying jobs, and years out of the workforce for childcare and eldercare.  The UN recently noted that “old-age poverty has a woman’s face” in developing and developed countries.

    

We are sending the Briefs to you as an exchange of perspectives and views among women’s organizations as we prepare for CSW.  All of our Briefs are posted on our website (uswomenscaucus.org).  We intend these Briefs as a resource for NGOs in the US and abroad as we prepare our CSW advocacy statements.  If you have papers, materials, or statements your organization has developed for CSW 68, we would be very interested in receiving them.  

     Yours in feminist solidarity,

     Pam Perraud and Shaila Rao Mistry