Biden Releases ‘gender equity’ Plan

On Friday, the Biden Administration released the country’s first-ever national strategy to achieve gender equity and equality. The plan outlined ambitious goals to help women achieve parity with men in the United States and abroad, by addressing the primary obstacles to women’s advancement.

The current plan is the result of the President’s creation of the White House Gender Policy Council. “On International Women’s Day, the President issued an Executive Order establishing the White House Gender Policy Council to ensure that gender equity and equality are at the forefront of America’s domestic and foreign policy. That Executive Order also mandated the development of this first-ever national strategy to guide our work on gender equity and equality as a government and as a nation,” the President and Vice-president wrote in a letter introducing the strategy. 

The lofty goals highlighted in the national strategy reveal the administration is serious about their commitment to gender equity. 

The plan calls for a “whole of government” approach to ending gender inequalities, with the elimination of cash bail being one of the steps governments can take to combat gender and race disparities.But the calls to end cash bail come at a time when FBI data show an unprecedented rise in violent crime, with the numbers of murders in the U.S. rising by nearly 30% in 2020. That number represents the largest single-year increase recorded since the FBI began tracking the statistic.

The overall violent crime rate, which also includes assault, robbery and rape, rose 5% in 2020 compared to 2019.

Advocates for keeping the cash bail system argue that ending the practice would put the public at risk, pointing to statistics in cities that have eliminated cash bail that show the likelihood of rearrest before trial rose 37% in those locations. Suspects were also more likely to miss their court date in cities that had eliminated cash bail.

A letter from Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris included in the report argues that the reforms are needed to promote equality, saying that America has “never fully lived up to” the idea that “every one of us is equal in dignity and deserves to be treated equally.”

“This strategy outlines an ambitious agenda for this administration and those to come – a roadmap to help our nation close pernicious gender gaps and propel us toward a world with equal opportunity for all people,” the letter reads. “Ensuring that all people have the opportunity to live up to their full potential, regardless of gender identity or other factors, is not only a moral imperative. It is a strategic imperative.”