 Good afternoon and welcome to Policy Talks at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. I am Dr. Celeste Watkins Hayes, the Gene E. Fairfax Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor and Professor of Sociology here at the University of Michigan. Our topic for today, the fight for women's legal rights. We are really excited, very much excited to have with us Fatima Goss Graves. Before I introduce Ms. Goss Graves, let me offer a quick reminder about the format. We'll have some time toward the end for questions from the audience. We've received some questions in advance, but you can also submit questions in the live chat on YouTube or tweet your question to hashtag policy talks. Now let me introduce our speaker for the hour who I'll be in conversation with. Fatima Goss Graves is president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center. She served at numerous roles at NWLC for more than a decade, having spent her career fighting to advance opportunities for women and girls. She's had a distinguished track record, working across a broad set of issues central to women's lives, including income security, health and reproductive rights, education, access and workplace fairness. Ms. Goss Graves is among the co-founders of the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund, and we'll be talking about that today. Prior to becoming president, Ms. Goss Graves served as the center senior vice president for programs at NWLC, where she led the organization's broad program agenda to advance progress and eliminate barriers and employment, education, health, reproductive rights, and to help women lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Prior to that, as the center's vice president for education and employment, she led the center's anti-discrimination initiatives, including work to promote equal pay, combat harassment and sexual harassment at work and school, and advance equal access to education programs with a particular focus on outcomes for women and girls of color. Ms. Goss Graves received her BA from UCLA in 1998 and her JD from Yale Law School. I am particularly honored to have her here with me today as she has appeared in numerous outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The Chicago Tribune, MSNBC, NPR, the list goes on, and now she is here with us at the Ford School of Public Policy. Thank you so much Fatima for being here. It's really an honor to be in conversation with you. Oh, I'm so glad to be here and I'm excited for the conversation. Yes, yes. So first of all, tell us, given that bio that I just read, what are your earliest memories that speak to the work that you currently do now? Well, I'm sorry for the very long bio, but actually my early memories about how I understood the law and social justice work were really shaped, I think, through the stories of my family. I came up understanding that the law was a tool that could be used for change and that people, no matter who they were, can drive that change because I understood from a very early age that my dad and his siblings were the plaintiffs in a school desegregation case against the Knoxville, Tennessee School of Public Schools. Oh wow, okay. And so that actually shifted how I thought about the law, that it was this sort of powerful force for good and I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to be able to figure out how to use it and how to use it for good, how to use it for justice. So I've always understood the law as a tool for justice as grounded in our ability to be equal in this country. Right, right. It's so interesting that you talked about your family being plaintiffs in that case and I think that one of the things that would be really interesting for us to hear about is how that impacted your childhood and your growth and development. So it ignited a passion in the law, but what did it end up meaning for your family in the long term and in terms of what they were able to provide you and teach you? How did that experience of being a plaintiff in such a critical case around school desegregation shape your childhood in upbringing? You know, I actually think I'm really grateful for the way my parents talked both so openly and candidly around race in this country and around justice in this country and around what it would require of all of us, right? There was never sort of an understanding that it was those people over there who were supposed to work for public good and we sort of sat and waited around for that to happen. We understood that it was all of our work to do the work of justice and that was sort of grounded into my bones from a very young age. And so, you know, now as an adult, I look back at it and I sort of grew up in a very justice oriented family even if they didn't always use that language with a real serious understanding of our history and firsthand stories of what it meant to be the first to try to integrate systems and how does that public leaders can either do the work of good or stand in the way of meaningful progress, stand in the way of equality. And so, you know, we understood that in terms of schools in terms of the ability to have a business, in terms of housing and so, so much more. The stories that we tell each other really shapes our understanding of what's possible in the future. Absolutely. Now, tell me about your work right now. What's on your docket of impact? We're looking at a new administration. You are president of the National Women's Law Center. I can imagine that there's a long agenda in terms of what you wanna get accomplished and what your organization wants to get accomplished. What's on your docket right now, docket of impact? Yeah, I mean, so we're in the first 100 days of a new administration. And so that is always the time when things happen rapidly and where groups like mine at the National Women's Law Center make lots of ambitious demands. In fact, early in the first few days of the administration, we launched a 100 wins in a 100 days campaign where we're sort of ticking the range of things that we think need to happen, not only to restore where things were from four years ago but to launch us ahead because it's a very different world. And that was even true before the pandemic. But I will say, when we think about what's sort of very tippy top of mine, the pandemic has absolutely shaped what our priorities have to be. And we were extremely involved, both in the huge and transformative investment that was passed in the American Rescue Plan and not only making that sure that that big investment in childcare and housing and providing meaningful relief for people right now makes a difference, but in ensuring that women are centered in our economic recovery and the job creation in the infrastructure plans that we're making for the future. Over the last year, women have suffered greatly in this recession. And it's been a hard story to tell. We are back to 1988 levels of in terms of women's share of the workforce. So we have lost decades. So a big part of our agenda has to be not only building back to where we were at the start of the pandemic because that's not gonna be enough, right? What we know is that the systems we had in place are care infrastructure, the wages and conditions of where women work and so much more. Those systems weren't serving us well before and it's how we got in the place we are. So what are the things that you think need to happen for us to be able to build back better in that respect as it relates to women in the labor force? How do we get women re-engaged? How do we create that infrastructure of care? How do we think about the conditions of work? What are some of the specifics that you think need to happen because we are gonna really have to roll up our sleeves from a policy perspective to be able to realize the kinds of gains that we're talking about right now. That's right. I mean, so I'm just gonna say a couple of things about our care infrastructure in particular that were not new problems. They weren't problems that started with the pandemic but there were two things that are features that we have to correct for. The first is that we've long treated our care system like it's a totally a personal problem, right? You're either good at solving that problem and you and your family have it together or you're not so good at solving that problem. When that is the wrong way to think about it and what the pandemic has taught us is that really we have an infrastructure of care. We have a situation where families can't actually afford to pay much more for care and workers should not make less for care. And whenever you have that sort of math problem, the third party solution here is the government. The government provides the infrastructure that makes this thing that is foundational for our economies and families to work makes sense. So we have to shift it from an individual idea to a system and foundational idea. The second thing is our systems of care have been largely built on the idea that it is okay to pay a largely woman-of-color workforce poverty wages to take care of the things that are most important to us in our life. Our elders, those who have disabilities and our young children. Well, that is not a system that's gonna stand up to the test of time, let alone the equity issues of having an entire workforce paid so little wages. So what it is gonna require both in terms of home-based and community care, in terms of childcare and in terms of paid family leave, it is going to require that we do a very serious and significant investment that we stop treating it as a personal problem and address care as a continuum so that people who need paid family leave to care for a newborn, to care for a sick one or to care for themselves. People who need paid leave to care for their own that they are able to access it so that people can age with dignity and the care workers who provide that care can take care of it with the wages that they need. And so that the many parents in this country can have the insurance that they can go to work or go to school or do what they need and that there's a childcare system to support it. Those things require investment. And so if we can treat them like the infrastructure that they are, they are just as significant as say the roads and bridges are in terms of infrastructure and frankly, the people who are building those roads and bridges they need care to. Right, right. And what do you think about a piece that's kind of coming up in the debate around the Biden plan, around whether there should be certain behavioral requirements to get access to safety net services and resources, whether there should be work requirements and things of that nature, to get access to family allowances or certain tax credits or et cetera. What do you think about that kind of debate around the kind of behavioral piece and surveillance that people are thinking about building in or wanting to build in? So I actually think what we're seeing right now, if you look at the Biden plan on infrastructure, on jobs, on the rescue plan, it's extremely popular. Like across the country, people agree that this is a strategy and that's true regardless of political party. People are supportive of this plan where we run into a problem is in Washington sometimes. So I think we have to be careful about how we think about what is and isn't bipartisan. If people in this country want it to happen, I think we need a new language to talk about it because that probably suggests these things are bipartisan. But one of the games that you're seeing happening in Washington right now that I think we have to pay close attention to is a resurrection of old stories and tropes that are frankly steeped in a racist and sexist history, right? What they are trying to do is what has worked really successfully in the past and say it is those people over there and I'm gonna conjure up this person who just doesn't wanna work when the truth of the matter is unemployment is to add rates, especially for black and Latino women that we have not seen because of the care crisis, right? We haven't seen these rates in many, many years. They're at hovering just under 10%. And so when I see those sorts of tropes being coming, trying to come back that suggests people wanna work, I think of it as a distraction. It is a distraction from doing the sort of investment that ensures that people can do what they need to do, which is both work and engaging care. And it's a distraction from actually addressing the real problem, which is that many people are working sometimes full-time, sometimes multiple jobs while trying to care. And you know what? They still are making poverty wages. And that is none of the fault of the people who are in those jobs that we haven't set forth better conditions or addressed higher wages. That is a problem that falls squarely on the employers that are paying those low wages. So if we're in a situation where we come out there to the side of the pandemic, where we have seen dramatically long food lines, where we are approaching what might be a historic housing crisis, and the only response people have is an effort to undermine the sort of hardworking people in this country who have done their best to keep things together without an appropriate net. We are focused on the wrong things. Very, very great points. So part of what has been a continual thread in your work is issues around women's rights. And you've also been very involved in not just kind of economic issues, but also thinking about legal protections for women, particularly around sexual harassment. And I wonder if you can talk about the times up legal defense fund. We remember the Me Too hashtags. We remember the ways in which there has been a catalytic movement afoot. But what people might not know is there was actually a legal infrastructure in the times up legal defense fund to help to support some of that work. Can you talk about that? Talk about how it got developed, the overriding goals and just help us understand the story of the times up legal defense fund. Yeah, so you were right in the days after the Weinstein stories broke, survivors around the country began telling and sharing their stories, lifting up Tarana Burke's framework of Me Too, which is really a solidarity framework, if you think about it. And the actress activist Alyssa Milano at the time had put all a call to action that if you've experienced harassment, use this hashtag. And Me Too, Tarana Burke's long framework really went viral and it took off then. And at the same time, and this may have happened here too, that women around the country started gathering and having sort of quiet conversations around kitchen tables, around water coolers. If it was today, it would be on Zoom. I'm sure where people were sort of wanting to do something. And that was true in the entertainment industry too. And leading women in the entertainment industry started gathering saying they wanted to do something. And at the time, there was an important intervention. And it came in the form of this beautiful letter written by a dear friend, Monica Ramirez, who wrote a letter on behalf of hundreds of thousands of farm workers. I have to just say a little bit about this letter because it's an important lesson, I think. In her letter, she said, dear sisters, you have been harassed in the bright lights. In the farm, for women farm workers, they are harassed in the shadows. But we have a lot in common and we are ready to march on your behalf. Wow. And that shook up how people thought about what was possible. And we understood that across area that there was an opportunity for people to build together. And it led to some of the most magnificent activations I have seen, including one on the Golden Globes that is still one of my favorite activations, where leading women in entertainment who were up for awards at the Golden Globes passed the mic, literally. And people were asking like, what are you wearing? And they passed the mic to activists, to farm worker activists, restaurant worker activists, domestic workers, who used that big mic to talk about ending harassment and violence and the conditions that allow it to thrive. Well, so many people and a number of attorneys who were involved in these conversations understood that as people came forward to tell their stories, they were gonna need a lot of things, but one of the things they were gonna need was attorneys. Yes. And so that is how the Times of Legal Defense Fund was born. It came together extremely fast because we wanted to be ready to receive the many people who were telling their stories and wanted legal assistance as they to figure out what their options were, needed legal assistance, because some of them were finding themselves on the other side of litigation for daring to speak their truth and might need some media assistance too. And so we have a network of over 600 attorneys. We have PR and other storytelling assistant firms who stand at the ready to help survivors who wanna come forward. And over the last three years, we have been able to help over 4,000 people who have come forward and come through our system. We funded over 200 cases. It is for sure a development that the Law Center is not only proud to sort of be a part of it, to house it, to run it, to have helped to build it, but it is going to be, I am confident one of the highlights of my career to have been able to work with so many amazing people to try to meet this moment in this way. Right, right. That is so inspiring to hear. And people should know it is still, the Times of Legal Defense Fund is still ongoing and it's housed within the National Women's Law Center. Is that correct? That is right. We house and run it. We have a team of folks who make sure. So if people are in need of assistance around harassment or related retaliation at work, they can find us really easily. And if they experience sex discrimination in other settings, in schools, in housing, in healthcare, they can also reach out to the National Women's Law Center and our network helps people around those types of issues as well. Okay, so as you've done this work, what are some of the barriers that surprised you? What were some of the challenges in whether it was laws that were, laws that became really challenging and insurmountable, whether it was logistics, whether it was resources, whether it was power pushing back on you for the work that you were doing, what barriers surprised you in this work? Yeah, so I mean, one of the things that maybe it shouldn't surprise me, that it sort of frustrates me is that, and we've seen this time and again, is that many times people do try to use their internal systems when they come forward. They do, and they're almost always met with retaliation. That retaliation is thriving, despite it being so squarely illegal and actually an easier claim to win on than the underlying harassment, that the instinct from many institutions is still to retaliate. And so we're clear we need to focus on that. The other thing that I would say, again, it shouldn't surprise me, maybe it's frustrating, is how tough it is to break really old stories that have long followed around the issue of harassment and violence. The prevailing view that women lie is a story that people hold onto when it's hard to disrupt, or the view that it's not that big of a deal or not that bad, still a hard thing to disrupt. And so we are not only focused on the legal and policy implications of this and changing and shifting our laws to better meet the needs, but also engaging in cultural conversations to shift how people think about this, how we feel about it, their hearts and minds work. Okay, and what are the cultural conversations look like? So tell us about the infrastructure that you have around that and some of the initiatives that you're involved in with that. Well, one of the initiatives that I'm really excited about that was sparked this year together with Time's Up and also the Me Too Movement is a campaign called We as Ourselves, and that is borrowed from the Paul Gooden's book, When and Where I Enter. And this is a cultural narrative campaign focused squarely on Black survivors, focused on creating the conditions where they can tell their stories safely and where their stories can be received in ways that they are heard and not immediately demonized. And that is 100% meeting people where they are and challenging the stories they currently have in their head about Black survivors, which are so deeply rooted in our history. And they're placing them with new ones. Yes, yes, interesting. And one of the quotes that you have said is that misogyny and white supremacy don't exist in isolation. They are in fact dependent on one another. Can you expound on that quote for us? Well, that sounds like me. But here's the thing, and I think it is a mistake that we have made for a long time where we think about them as very different ideas, that there's white supremacy over here. And now there's more of an understanding of white supremacy. It was even in the inaugural address when the president of the United States said the words white supremacy. I almost rewound that to hear it because that's sort of acknowledgement of the risk, the harm to our very democracy from white supremacy. Right, right. We would be making a grave mistake if we did not understand that misogyny is bound up in white supremacy. And that our understanding of how we see women of color is a conversation about the two, right? And so if we think about the horrific attack in Atlanta and the public conversation around what happens when six Asian American women lose their lives in the way that has, that is an overdue and needed conversation around hate against the AAPI community in this comfort country. We are missing an opportunity if we do not weave up in there and the way in which that sort of racist violence shows up against AAPI women, right? It shows up as sexual violence. It shows up as physical violence. It is no accident that most of the attacks have been against older AAPI women. And that is entirely related into the stories we have in our head about race and sex in that community. Right. So we dismantle one without dismantling the other. We won't truly be free, but if we understand that they are so deeply connected, we have a path forward. Right, right. And the fetishization in terms of sexual fetishization and how that's tied to race and all of that. Right, and that is bound up in our history, right? That is bound up in our early laws banning AAPI women immigrants from entering this country, banning Chinese immigrants because of stereotypes and presumptions about their promiscuity, right? So these are actually not accidental ideas that they show up in this way in violent ways, but we will totally miss if we do not understand the ways in which they are connected. We have to talk about them together. Absolutely, absolutely. So one of the things that I was sharing with you before we started was that I saw you on TV earlier this week and you were talking about the George Floyd trial. And I wonder if you can, from your vantage point and all of the different roles in which you serve, tell us about what you want people to remember as we witness this trial. Some are watching it closely, some are not watching it for a variety of reasons. And I wonder if you can talk about that and just mark this moment. Yeah, I mean, and I have to say for those who aren't watching every detail that you can also read it, it can be really hard to listen to the testimony in this trial, especially testimony from the first week where you had a nine-year-old girl testifying so young about what she witnessed in the language of a child. The young woman who was only 17 when she videotaped the murder. The testimony of the first week of all of the bystanders, many of whom were still living with trauma because they witnessed something so horrific of police calling the police or the police. If people saying something isn't wrong and the only person I know to call, so that was the first thing that I hope people take from that is A, there were people who tried to intervene, but B, the universal sense that something was wrong in real time. But the thing that feels different is the many police who testified that they too saw this video and were appalled, that it is not in line with their training, it is not in line with what they think about policing, it was not in line at all. And so the police perspective was lined up with the bystander perspective. That is a new thing. So we were going to see some typical things, we're going to see them try to play George Floyd as a scary person. We're going to see the defense try to say it wasn't the kneeling on him for nine and a half minutes effectively choking him to death that, and I'm being graphic on purpose, right? We're going to see them say it was something else. He had other conditions. Maybe he had taken a medicine. He was on drugs. You're going to see all of those things. But I think what will remain different about this case is that is an isolated and narrow view. In real time, people knew it was wrong and they aftermath people knew it was wrong and the policing community, they knew it was wrong. There is so much on the line. And it is my hope that this is the push we need for a shift in how we think about policing in this country that is a push we need for a shift and how we think about black people in this country. Right. And as I listened to you, the thread that I would connect for all of these different dialogues that we're having is our need to believe survivors and our struggle to do that partly because of all of the tropes that we carry around race and class and gender and sexuality and how they weave into how we understand who's credible. That's right. So I wonder if you can talk about that, that kind of legal term of credibility and how it gets so bound up in these issues. And we see it with black women who are subject, other folks who are subject to police violence, other folks who are subject to all kinds of violence, sexual harassment, et cetera, all of the things we've been talking about in terms of how we define who's credible. I think that you have really hit home on that because our understanding of who is credible and who gets to be a victim and who does not, right? That is very much shaped by our history. And so this trial is for sure, shaken that up, right? And one of the things that I think has been a series of important conversations that erupted out of the uprisings last summer was a candid conversation about black survivors in particular that they didn't feel safe calling the police, that they didn't feel like there was, that was a space because they weren't considered to be credible in the first place. And so it's disrupting all of our ideas around what real safety in this country looks like. And as long as we have systems that are so constrained by our history and current assumptions of race and gender so that we can't even look and disentangle facts, those systems won't work for us. Excellent, excellent point. So I also wanna ask about reproductive rights and access to healthcare for women. Those have been key topics for you. And I wonder if you can comment on their importance. I wonder if you can comment as we look to this new administration, some of the areas where we're gonna want to lean in on the conversation around women's health and reproductive rights and help us understand the stakes involved in making sure that we participate in that discussion as well. Well, I think people have to understand what we're facing coming after the last four years, right? Over the last four years, we had the Trump administration basically use every tool it had to undermine access to reproductive healthcare. And groups like the National Women's Law Center have had to use litigation to try to stop and block those efforts, efforts to make it harder to get contraception, efforts to allow medical providers and their office staff to refuse to provide care for religious, but also for moral reasons and personal disagreements, efforts to basically flip the Title X contraception, family planning program on its head and make it harder for people who are trusted providers and community to provide that care by having what is called a gag role, preventing people from either providing services or even giving referrals. So they can't give their own patients adequate information thing after thing after thing, attack after attack. And we haven't even talked about what's been happening in many states around the country, including in Michigan where state legislators have tried to race to put abortion care out of reach. All of that is happening at the same time and creating a sense of urgency. So even as this administration has a ton of work to do to, I don't know, get us through this pandemic to deal with a historic racial reckoning to deal with a historic economic recession, they also have to ensure that we both undo the harm of these many years, but actually pause to think about what are the freedoms and supports that people need to access the care they want, to ensure the idea that you should be able to access the care you need no matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter your income or your race is a real one. So that actually requires getting rid of some old ideas like the Hyde Amendment. The idea that our lowest income people are the only ones who can access abortion care in this country, get out of here, that's ridiculous. Some of these old ideas, we really have to flip on their heads. And we have to be looking at what has happened in the courts and thinking through a longer term strategy that ensures that people can access the full range of healthcare that they need, including reproductive health services without shame, without stigma and without some sort of division that means only some people get access to care and others do not and privilege Trump's all. Right, right. We have a question from the audience and it is what are the top economic policies the Biden administration must enact to prevent economic scarring for women pushed out of the workforce by COVID-19? Is expanded childcare access enough this audience member would like to know? That is a really good question. Expanded childcare access is a huge part of it, but it is not all. Paid leave is a huge part, but it's not all. Supporting the workers, one of the reasons we have really high unemployment for women right now is the care crisis, but it is also the sectors where women lost jobs in hospitality and retail and more. So there actually has to be a path to bringing back jobs. And if not jobs there, where are those jobs gonna be and what are the pathways to ensure that women can access them? So as they're thinking about doing things like building, creating jobs in the green economy, creating jobs around infrastructure broadly, how do we ensure that women have access to those jobs too? And then we have to take on the problems of job quality. Yes. Thirds of minimum wage workers are women, disproportionately so women of color. These are not just like after school jobs. These are jobs that people are using to support themselves and their families with a minimum wage federally that has been at 725 for over a decade. So we have to both raise the minimum wage, including one fair wage for tip workers and take on the range of job quality issues that make it hard for women and really any worker to thrive in those jobs. Absolutely. And one of the things that gets lost in the minimum wage discussion is I think that people have to be reminded of what minimum wage is and to be asked to stop and think about that. So when you think about that dollar amount of a little over $7 an hour and think about how quickly you can spend that money within minutes, that is an hour's worth of labor for someone. And to think about doing that for eight hours or 10 hours or not even being able to get enough hours because under our issues are an issue as well and trying to support a family on that, I think is something that all of us should be encouraged to think about, really think about an hour's worth of work and once you reduce for taxes and all of that, we're talking about a minuscule amount of money that people are being asked to live on and to support families on. It's real. And because of that, we should not have been surprised that people weren't sitting on these big safety nets on these big nest eggs. And what am I trying to say? Nest eggs. Yeah. When the symptoms- I'm going into the pandemic. You're not able to save when you're making $7.25 an hour. That's not even a part of the plan yet. It's all going out the door. It's all going out the door. Yes, yes. We have a fantastic question about intersectionality as well. So is there room for academics to specialize in critical race theory, intersectionality and black feminisms to bring in perspectives to make law more equitable? And I would probably expand that to say policy work as well. What kind of expertise is needed to make law and public policy more equitable for women and girls? And I think what I hear in that question is, is that kind of knowledge valued in policy conversations? I mean, ordinarily, I would have said why are they asking that question that coming off of the last administration where there was a really harmful executive order that sought to undermine critical race theory, sought to undermine intersectionality, understand why this question is on the table. And what I will tell you is the North Star that is guiding the Biden-Harris administration, race equity is core to everything they are doing. And has become a lens to examine public policy around. And I am really hopeful that we see more of that. There was literally an executive order established that requires them looking at race equity in terms of what the budget looks like, in terms of what the policy focuses. We've never seen anything like that before. But on the question of intersectionality, I mean, this is an area where our law has always struggled. Professor Kimberly Crenshaw has written about this for years around people who lost their cases because they were comparing black women to white women and saying, I don't see sex discrimination here. And then black women to black men and saying, I don't see race discrimination here. And there was no comparator for black women. I think there's opportunity for some of that to change even in the law in last summer, the Bostock decision, that is the case that basically said that the ban on sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it covered sexual orientation in gender identity discrimination too. The decision didn't use that language, but the decision effectively talked about intersectionality that multiple things can be happening at once. And those multiple characteristics can be protected all at the same time. You could experience sex discrimination and you could also experience caregiver discrimination, which is a form of sex discrimination all at once, for example, is what the case said. Do you find in terms, I have a question about language, racial equity versus racial justice, do you find the terms to be interchangeable? Do you find that some have particular valences that make you be strategic, that make you think strategically about what to use and when? What are your thoughts on how we're hearing racial justice, racial equity, and... So I'm gonna say that I am, there are lots of really good reasons that I am not an academic because there are academics who will school me in the many reasons that I should be more precise in my language than I am. And I tend to use equity and justice interchangeable, even though I know they can have more precise definitions, in part because I wanna socialize the idea that all of us should be striving towards justice, right? And equity is a part of that, but I also tend not to be super precise in racial equity. Yeah, me either, I'm just curious. I'm sure I have colleagues that would... I just forgot to say... I'll probably get an email. So I was just curious about what you thought about this. Yeah, so next question, also regarding intersectionality, when we look at women's rights, you have mentioned healthcare and housing. Should we also be speaking about environmental justice, LGBTQ equality, transportation, and other progressive causes that affect women? I suspect I know your answer to that, but I will yield the floor to you, yeah. Yes, we should. I mean, at the law center, we tend to use the phrase gender justice. And we use that language on purpose. And our tagline is actually justice for her, justice for all. And that is an intentional play on words that acknowledges that sometimes you are doing work that is deep and actually only and exclusively about the experiences of women. And they call into everyone to support us in that work. And sometimes you are doing this work and it is that there is a story to tell about how a group of women are particularly impacted or women are one of the groups that are impacted. But it is more of all of us are called to be in that fight, not just as allies, but because there's a particular group of women that might be impacted. And I'd say that that perspective is a thing that guides us, for example, to be deeply involved in questions around LGBTQ equality more broadly. We're not just there as allies. We're not just there even as those who understand that there are people who identify as women who also identify as LGBTQ to the point of intersectionality. But we're also there because we understand that the freedom for LGBTQ people is absolutely bound up with freedom for women more broadly. Yes, yeah. And this question leads right into that. So how are you either through your work or at the broader work of the National Women's Law Center viewing the latest wave of anti-trans legislation in states? What are the greatest threats from these and what solutions do you see as the most promising or worthy? So the first thing that I should say about it is it is devastating because of this symbolism of it to target children, which many, much of this legislation does in this way. It is not just harmful for individual and individual states. I think about young people in states around the country who see the news about these laws and it's devastating. So that's the first thing that I should say. The second thing is it is appalling and outrageous that some of these legislators who I have never seen do a single thing on Title IX in sports or suddenly coming up with all this faux concern about girls in sports. Where have they been as athletic programs have been cut around the country? Where were they as we've been having conversations around sexual harassment in sports? Where have they been when we have pointed out the disparities in fields? Nowhere to be found, but suddenly they are here and the reason that they are here, I believe is because they're trying to distract us from a broader conversation right now and that fundamental conversation is really about the public agrees that LGBTQ people in this country should be equal no matter where they are in public spaces at work, at schools. That condoning on purpose and affirmative discrimination is completely at odds with our constitution, with our current laws and with really who we either are or should be as a country. So it is both culturally devastating. I think these laws will largely be knocked down in the courts because they are so flagrantly illegal but the message it is sending, it is so terribly harmful and I am ashamed and these lawmakers should be ashamed of themselves. Yes, yeah, thank you for that. Great question. National Women's Law Center analysis shows before the pandemic, Latinas were paid 55 cents for every dollar earned by a white man with Native American and Black women earning 60 and 63 cents respectively. White women earned 79 cents, Asian women, Asian American women 85 cents for a combined gender gap of 82 cents on the dollar. How are we attacking that specific problem? Yeah, so there's a few things that make up the wage gap in this country. Some of it is people in the same types of jobs and pay discrimination is the problem. And so there's a law that will soon come before the house called the Paycheck Fairness Act that would make it harder for employers to pay people unfairly. Some of the wage gap though is because of job segregation, the fact that that number I said before that women are two thirds of minimum wage workers and they're underrepresented in many high wage fields. And so there are other solutions like raising the minimum wage, like taking on the barriers to high wage fields that are the solution. Some of it comes from what a lot of us call the motherhood penalty. We know that there's a range of stereotyping that mothers face at work. That has been studied again and again. But we also know that we don't have the supports in place to actually to go back to my earlier point that make it possible for people to do what a lot of women do, which is care and work. And that employers sometimes make it harder. There's a bill that I'm hoping will soon get a vote in the house called the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. And that bill would basically tell employers that if a pregnant worker needs a reasonable accommodation that they can get one. And the types of stories we hear about people leaving their jobs is that their work is a cashier, but their employer won't let them sit on a stool because they don't want cashiers sitting on a stool and they're standing all day into their pregnancy or they need an accommodation on lifting or they need to be able to take bathroom breaks when they need to take a bathroom break while they're pregnant rather than when they're employer. And that sort of policing of our time in bodies is a particular feature in low wage jobs that you don't see in higher wage jobs in the same ways. Yeah, yeah, that policing of bodies that's a really interesting point. The previous administration changed the rules on how to deal with sexual assault survivors, especially regarding Title IX. Can you describe the recent changes at the Department of Education? Do they go far enough? So you may have seen that yesterday the Department of Education made an announcement that it was going to do a few things, that it was going to hold a series of public hearings, of which I really hope this is an opportunity for survivors around the country to participate, for students to describe their experiences, that we're gonna put out some additional question and answer document to help people understand how to think about this time. We've moved from the harmful approach from the DeVos administration and we're in a new phase and that they were going to do rulemaking. And so the context of that rulemaking and what it will be, we still don't know. We haven't yet received their notice of proposed rulemaking, but it is a big deal. And I should disclose that the National Women's Law Center sued the Trump administration over the final rule from the last administration. We think that it violated both the Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act and Title IX itself, but we are happy for them to move ahead, to turn the page on that past rule and to actually create situations where schools can create conditions where survivors can come forward and be treated with dignity and respect and where they have procedures that are fair and where people are treated equitably. So Fatima, as I listened to you, I'm so taken by your brilliance and your command of the policy issues and your command of them from a legal perspective but also a humanist perspective. And also all of the ways in which you're bringing intersectionality and a lot of the kind of academic and legal frameworks to bear on the work. I know we have so many students out there who are watching you and saying, this is what I wanna do. This is what I wanna be able to do. What advice would you give? What are the strategies? How do you stay so sharp and informed? How do you have such a command of the issues? I know that our students love to hear those really practical strategies around how you do the brilliance that you do. Well, I appreciate you and I hear a bit about echo. I hope it's not disturbing people but what I will say is, and this is a thing I wish I was doing more of, but I encourage people to do it is to read. And somehow a lot of my friends seem to have written books during the pandemic. I don't know how people have written these pandemic books but they have and I have a reading list because I actually think transitioning into this new administration in this new time requires us to do some pausing and thinking about where are we going over a much longer arc. And so I really encourage people to read as much as they can long form articles. And one of them, Heather McGee has a new book, Alicia Garza has a new book, Saddleisha Tillett has a new book. There is a lot of stuff for us to read and let our minds wander a bit and think about. And the second thing that I would just say is, I hope people follow the path that they're really passionate about. I mean, one of the things that I feel really blessed to have been able to do in my career is actually headed direction where I have real passion where I care deeply about these issues. I'm confident if I was not in this role that I would be knocking on everyone's door saying, how can I help? And if you are not in a day job role, I encourage you to do that. Knock on people's doors and say, how can I help? Because we need all of you. And how did you build the leadership skills to be able to run an organization that is focused on these issues? Because so many people are passionate about the issues, but then you've got to be able to merge it in your work with being able to run a major organization that has a significant platform. Tell us about how you develop those skills and what advice you would give to students who are really interested in doing the same. I mean, the one thing that I would say is that this leading in this time is really, really extraordinary. And I don't know that there's actually really guidebooks for it. And so maybe that's a bit freeing. I was really lucky enough to learn from a lot of people. I have tons of people who are sort of my mentors who I call for advice. I call the founders of the organization. I call people on my board. I call other leaders in the work. I call my family who ground my thinking pretty consistently. And so the thing that I would say is ask for help because you will need it. And ask for help from a lot of different places. It's okay to ask the same question to different people and then decide what is right for you, right? There very rarely is only one option for someone in a tough situation. That is such great advice. And I just want to thank you so much for your ideas and your candor and as we just kind of puzzle through the issues together and thought through this new era in which we find ourselves. We are so glad to have the opportunity to talk to you, to hear what the work is like on the front lines of many of these conversations. And I just as a final question would ask you, what should all of us be doing who are passionate about these issues? Who may occasionally be doom scrolling through news feeds? And yet trying to stay helpful. I mean, it's trying to stay optimistic at some of the other developments that are coming down the pike. I think this is such a time of both optimism and anxiety being held at the same time. So what advice would you give us for what we should be doing right now? Well, what I will tell you is to jump in the fight. For me, if I feel anxious about something actually participating is a way. And I think if we've learned anything over the last four years, it's that our democracy is built for us to participate. We should call Congress. We should participate in the Title IX hearings. We should write our own personal comments for rulemaking. We should donate. We should join and protest. Our democracy is built to participate. And so what I would say is jump in, jump in the fight. That is fantastic. Thank you so much. I can't think of a better way to end this conversation. And on behalf of the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, I wanna thank you so much for being here and for giving of your time and your brilliance. And I wanna thank the audience members for being here. And I wanna thank those who submitted those fantastic questions that really allowed us to think through a whole host of issues over this hour. Thank you, we are filled with gratitude Fatima. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And on behalf of the Ford School of Public Policy, take care, be well, and thank you for joining us for this policy talk.