Women In Government Recent Events
August 2011
At Women In Government's 13th Annual Eastern Regional Conference, Heather Arnet spoke about issues that her region has dealt with cpmcerning female youths in Pennsylvania. She is the Chief Executive Officer of the Women and Girls Foundation (WGF). The mission of WGF is to achieve equality for women and girls in Southwest Pennsylvania. At WGF, Ms. Arnet has spearheaded efforts to increase women’s representation on the public and corporate boards of Pittsburgh and in elected office. She has been identified as one of Pittsburgh’s “Top 40 under 40” by Pittsburgh Magazine, as one of the “Top Twelve Noteworthy Business Leaders of 2006” by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and received the Diamond Award, for “Outstanding CEO Leadership” by the Pittsburgh Business Times in April 2008. In addition to her activist and philanthropy work, Ms. Arnet also writes and directs feminist theatre. Most recently her play Yo’Mama! (about the challenges and joys of modern motherhood) was awarded a grant from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and the Sprout Fund and has been produced in Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Alaska. She was the Keynote speaker at the welcome dinner in Pittsburgh.
January 2011
At Women In Government's 17th Annual State Director's Conference & Ninth Biennial First-Term Legislators Conference, the State of Women in the legislature was considered a high priority issue for legislators. Kelly Dittmar, a researcher for the Center for American Women & Politics at the Eagleton Institue of Politics at Rutgers University gave an excellent presentation, that is available here.
Information
Currently, women make up 1,749, or 23.7% of the 7,382 state legislators serving in the United States.
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