Mindful Continuing Education

1. In recent years, women and girls of color have made tremendous progress, but these achievements may obscure the very real challenges and disparities that occur for this population, which primarily include each of the following EXCEPT:

2. Due to recent policy implemented by President Obama, nearly two million people who work as home health aides, personal care aides, including the approximately 50 percent of whom are women of color, now have minimum wage and overtime protections to ensure they are paid fairly for their work.

3. While unemployment rates for women of color are still generally higher than for White women over the past three years, 12 month average unemployment rates have fallen by 2.6 percentage points for Black women, 2.8 percentage points for Hispanic women, and 1.5 percentage points for APPI women.

4. Recent legislation has ensured that an estimated 12.5 million women of color with private health insurance now have guaranteed access to women's preventive services, including well-women visits, FDA-approved contraception, screenings for cervical cancer, prenatal car, and other services without cost sharing.

5. In order to provide education reform for marginalized groups, states and districts must now develop rigorous and comprehensive plans designed to improve educational outcomes for all students, improve quality of education, and:

6. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which has issued extensive guidance on schools' Title IX obligations to provide equal athletic opportunities, enforces Title IX to ensure that all students, including women and girls of color, have equal access to opportunities in school.

7. One example of the Obama administration's effort to provide opportunities for students to excel in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is the 2014 STEM Quality Partnership Grant and Mentoring Program.

8. Even with gains in the workforce for women of color, they are also still overrepresented in low-paying jobs, underrepresented in management positions, and too often lack access to critical supports like quality, affordable child care and paid leave.

9. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released new rules implementing protections for victims of domestic violence living in public and voucher supported housing, and in 2013 President Obama expanded these protections to:

10. In order to protect the many women of color and numerous others who are home care workers, the Fair Labor Standards Act ensures that:

11. Many women of color are at-risk for an insecure retirement and want to be saving more, but lack access to a workplace retirement account or encounter barriers to signing up for one.

12. Women of color have made important progress on a number of health indicators, but glaring disparities still remain and each of the following are examples of priorities in combating these disparities EXCEPT:

13. In 2010, the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS), the first national plan to address the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic, was released with three health focused goals which included decreasing HIV-related prejudice, eliminating mother-to-child HIV transmission, and increasing HIV research.

14. Strategies to promote sexual and reproductive health among women of color include evaluating efforts to reduce risk behavior among female sex workers, improving access to comprehensive family planning services, and working to reduce the incidence of congenital syphilis.

15. Far too many women in American experience domestic violence and sexual assault, and woman in some communities of color face particularly high rates of these crimes as well as facing additional barriers to receiving support and justice.

16. Some of the primary focuses to address violence and sexual assault among women of color include funding culturally specific programs addressing violence against women in Indian country, working to discover best practices and expand services for survivors and addressing the intersection of violence and:

17. Women and girls of color are still overrepresented in the criminal justice system, and while incarceration rates for Hispanic women have fallen by nearly 44 percent since 2010, rates for black women have risen slightly.

18. In recent years, girls have become more likely than ever before to be involved in the juvenile justice system, with most entering the system as a result of violations such as possession of marijuana, assault on school campuses, and involvement in traffic accidents.

19. In gangs, sexual violence is often used as a weapon to victimize young women, and young women and girls of color are among the populations at highest risk, which is one of many reasons that communities and federal agencies must work together to share information and build local capacity to prevent and reduce youth violence.

20. Since over half of incarcerated female inmates are mothers, recent initiatives have been implemented, including Universal Children's Day, to encourage visitation and a pilot programs to offer video visiting with children.