Welcome to AAUW-Wisconsin
Organized in 1921

End of Year Report

What Have You As a Public Policy Advocate Accomplished?

Thank you for playing an integral role in AAUW's success in moving our shared mission forward this year. Your vocal advocacy and financial support, along with the tens of thousands of others in our nationwide network of e-activists, has helped AAUW influence public policy throughout 2009. As educated women and men, we continue to be advocates and catalysts for sustainable change.

Over the past year, together, we have:

• Regained ground in the fight for pay equity by successfully advocating for the enactment of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed into law by President Obama on January 29, 2009.
• Celebrated at the White House after more than a decade of work to expand protections for victims of hate crimes with the successful enactment of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
• Successfully supported Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Successful passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act in the House and increased cosponsors in the Sentate.
• Supported House passage of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act.
• Advocated for coverage of maternity care and preventive care, an end to gender rating, and other protections in the largest health care overhaul in 40 years. Advocates also fought and rallied against the anti-choice amendments on Capitol Hill and across the country.
• Worked for Senate confirmation of Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor, a longtime champion for working women and their families.
• Convinced the House to support work-life balance policies with the passage of the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act.
• Increased the visibility of and respect for AAUW's work through an in-depth meeting between AAUW Executive Director Linda Hallman and First Lady Michele Obama.
• Supported the Obama administration's actions to repeal the Global Gag rule and rescind harmful Bush administration regulations that would severely limit women's access to reproductive health and family planning services.
• Increased congressional support for expanded access to contraception and preventive health care services and comprehensive age-appropriate, and medically accurate sexual education in schools.
• Celebrated the enactment of a no-cost technical fix that will again ensure university students and low-income women once again have access to affordable birth control.
• Provided ideas for action through AAUW's policy recommendations on the supports working women and their families need to thrive in a changing workforce, in reaction to the release of The Shriver Report – A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything.
• Opposed continued funding for private and religious school vouchers in our nation's capital that fly in the face of our nation's commitment to civil rights and public education, and made progress towards an appropriate end to the voucher program.
• Celebrated the anniversary of Title IX by encouraging members of Congress to enforce this landmark legislation in our high schools across the country, and taking part in a White House celebration with Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
• Increased awareness of the pay gap between men and women through programming based on AAUW’s Pay Equity Resource Kit, Equal Pay Day events, telling members of Congress to acknowledge and showing members of Congress the everyday faces of pay equity. Keep the Change until Women Have Real Change.
• Kept issues like pay equity, work-life balance, workforce investment, and education in the spotlight by submitting comments and recommendations to President Obama, the Obama administration, the White House Task Force for Middle Class Working Families, and the White House Council on Women and Girls.
• Strengthened our voice on Capitol Hill through tens of thousands of advocacy messages sent from Action Network members to their members of Congress. Another 21,000 letters were sent to the Hill on behalf of AAUW members from the Public Policy and Government Relations Department.
• Put a face to our voice with approximately 1,800 visits to members of Congress by the AAUW Action Fund Capitol Hill Lobby Corps.
• Held members of Congress accountable for their votes using the AAUW Action Fund Congressional Voting Record. Action Network members thanked their elected officials who voted with AAUW on priority issues and expressed their disappointment to those officials who did not support our mission.
• Kept members of our communities informed via letters to the editors of local papers on a variety of topics, including pay equity and Title IX. You can see just a few of the published letters in AAUW's Newsroom.

YOU have made it possible for AAUW to advocate for you. And YOU have written those letters to officials regarding AAUW issues. You are THANKED! Check out AAUW issues at AAUW.org. Click on the Advocacy tab.

Happy New Year 2010,
Barbara Peterson