Students advocate before local commission
Blog post by Christine Biggen (IHRC exchange student from Germany)
On November 9th, 2015 three Santa Clara Law IHRC students (Christine Biggen, Courtney Kimmey, and Krysha Chatman) addressed the Santa Clara County Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) to seek its support for a CEDAW ordinance in Santa Clara County.
CEDAW stands for “Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women”. It is a major U.N. human right treaty the U.S. federal government has yet to ratify. However, federal inaction in this field provides local governments with a great opportunity to incorporate CEDAW principles locally by adopting a CEDAW ordinance.A CEDAW ordinance in Santa Clara County would mean joining a movement of more than 40 cities and counties. Cities for CEDAW is a group that is trying to get more cities to pass such local ordinances. San Francisco has been one of the most successful stories thus far.
Our project’s goal was to investigate the possibility of implementing CEDAW on the local level in Santa Clara. We decided to focus on Santa Clara County since the County has a very active Office of Women’s Policy (OWP) and the CSW has already been working on great policies which would fit perfectly within the CEDAW framework. To this end, we reached out to Esther Peralez-Dieckmann, director of the OWP, to discuss with her the County’s past CEDAW work.
In an interview with Ms. Peralez-Dieckmann, we learned that our request was timely since the County is currently dealing with gender-related wage issues in Santa Clara County. They are about to release a report containing information on wage gap and wage theft issues related to women in Santa Clara County. Equal pay is also addressed in CEDAW Art. 11; according to the treaty, all State Parties shall take all appropriate measures “to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of employment in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, the same rights.” That being said, a CEDAW ordinance would be an additional puzzle piece that would complement the great work the County has already been doing on women’s issues.
IHRC supervising attorney Britton Schwartz, IHRC student Krysha Chatman, OWP director Esther Peralez-Dieckmann and IHRC student Christine Biggen at the Office of Women’s Policy.
Ms. Peralez-Dieckman made it possible for us to present this idea to the CSW at its monthly public meeting last week. Our goal was to pitch the idea of a CEDAW ordinance to this commission and see if they would be willing to request the Board of Supervisors of Santa Clara County to pass a CEDAW ordinance.
With the help of Ms. Peralez-Dieckman and her wealth of information about women’s issues in the county, we prepared a presentation that explained how a CEDAW ordinance would help the county institutionalize a focus on women and girls, what CEDAW means, how other cities have incorporated CEDAW locally, and what it would mean to pass a CEDAW ordinance locally. We complemented our presentation with packets of information that included template CEDAW ordinances and a fact sheet to provide the audience with concrete data of women’s issues in Santa Clara County and illustrated how a CEDAW ordinance could help to address them.
The Commissioners showed great interest and asked several questions after our presentation, including concrete comments on what a possible ordinance could contain. Our team received positive feedback from the commissioners and from Ms. Peralez-Dieckman, and even got invited to an upcoming meeting in Sacramento in January, where the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles will discuss their experiences in adopting a CEDAW ordinance.
We recently learned that the Executive Committee of the CSW agreed to move forward with our proposal and decided to delegate the task to its Gender and Economic Equity Committee. We are thrilled about the opportunity to work with this Committee to get the county to pass a CEDAW ordinance.
IHRC students Krysha Chatman and Courtney Kimmey presenting the CEDAW framework to the CSW.
All in all, the presentation has been a great success. Stay tuned – the Clinic will carry on this project next semester so that we can get closer to our goal of Santa Clara County becoming a CEDAW city!