As we shut Ladies’s Historical past Month, we rejoice the various robust ladies who’ve contributed to our Nation, in spite of the limitations that can exist and those they’d to triumph over. This month has been particularly significant as I’ve had robust ladies round me my complete existence. I used to be raised through a unmarried mom and appeared as much as my older sister as she trailblazed in her prison occupation in public pastime. I’m deeply thankful to the various feminine function fashions who opened a trail for me and lots of others. As Vice President Kamala Harris says, “First however no longer the ultimate” and I’m hoping to do the similar for the various ladies who will come after me.

On the U.S. Division of Well being & Human Products and services’ (HHS) Place of business for Civil Rights (OCR), we replicate at the paintings forward folks to deal with discrimination and disparities and advance gender fairness and equality in our nation’s well being and human products and services techniques.

Ladies make up part of the U.S. inhabitants. From suffragists and abolitionists, to our first feminine Vice President, our nation has skilled centuries of development against gender equality. But, demanding situations and inequalities persist:

• Ladies proceed to earn not up to their male opposite numbers. Whilst Equivalent Pay Day on March 12, 2024 marks how some distance right into a next yr ladies, on moderate, will have to paintings to earn a person’s revenue from the former yr, pay disparities are extra pronounced for Black ladies, ladies of colour, and ladies with disabilities. Latinas, who face the biggest salary hole, will have to paintings into December of the following yr to earn a non-Latino white guy’s revenue.
• The U.S. has the best maternal mortality charge amongst high-income international locations, although maximum are preventable. Black ladies and Local American ladies face upper possibility of affected by maternal deaths. Leading edge movements to reinforce maternal well being and delivery results for pregnant and postpartum ladies are vital to get rid of those disparities. 
• Transgender ladies file upper charges of violent victimization than cisgender ladies.

I sign up for President Biden in his name issued in his Proclamation on Ladies’s Historical past Month, 2024, “might all of us proceed running to construct an international worthy of the desires and objectives of all girls and women.”

OCR enforces a variety of federal privateness regulations and antidiscrimination regulations that offer protection to affected person privateness, together with those that want get admission to to care, ladies who’re pregnant, ladies with disabilities, or ladies who establish as LGBTQI+.

As a part of my place of work’s paintings on nondiscrimination and dedication to justice, a few of OCR’s contemporary efforts come with:

OCR may be a various body of workers and I wish to take a second to acknowledge a few of its ladies leaders:

• Jenny Ma serves as OCR’s Essential Deputy Director.
• Genevieve Kelly is serving because the Appearing Leader of Body of workers.
• Robinsue Frohboese is the Deputy Director of Strategic Making plans.
• The vast majority of OCR’s 8 Areas national are led through ladies (six):
  • Jamie Rahn Ballay, Regional Supervisor, Mid-Atlantic Area
  • Linda Colón, Regional Supervisor, Jap & Caribbean Area
  • Andrea Oliver, Regional Supervisor, Rocky Mountain Area
  • Susan Rhodes, Regional Supervisor, New England Area
  • Marisa Smith, Regional Supervisor, Southwest Area
  • Barbara Stampul, Regional Supervisor, Southeast Area

I so recognize the various contributions of the ladies that paintings at OCR to advance privateness and civil rights, and the various ladies around the nation who paintings to make well being care extra obtainable, inexpensive, and higher for all. Their exhausting paintings each day conjures up me to do extra.

Melanie