Education and Public Policy
The evidence
clearly indicates that educating women produces dramatic ripple
effects. In the developing world, statistics show that as women's
educational opportunities expand, family sizes decrease and
children's health and education improve. In the United States, the
stream of educated women progressed swiftly once barriers to
employment were lowered. Thus, the Foundation will encourage
women's education and training, which is already a priority of the
field offices in Asia and Africa.
Over the past
decade women's studies and women's policy research groups have
contributed important new insights that are helping to refocus
national policies and whole fields and disciplines. One principal
challenge is ensuring that new women's studies scholarship
continues to move into the academic mainstream. Another is avoiding
the elitism of some early women's studies efforts, which focused
primarily on white, upper-middle-class women. A third challenge is
educating policy makers about the links between improvements in
women's status and broader community benefits, and between women's
roles and such worldwide phenomena as the internationalization of
the labor force, food and debt crises, industrialization in the
Third World, and migration. The Foundation will assist women's
studies groups, researchers, and teachers engaged in both
ground-breaking research and mainstreaming work. Funding for travel
and study, workshops, seminars, and publications will encourage
communication with policy makers.
Moreover, as
with employment and income generation, a priority will be helping
centers for academic and policy research on women mature
institutionally. Many of these centers, still relatively young and
fragile, face a difficult time over the next few years because of
funding cuts in research budgets. The Foundation, one of the few
organizations able to help out with core costs as well as with
specific research and action projects, will encourage centers to
hone their management skills, identify what they do best, and then
concentrate on developing their comparative advantage.