HARLEM — The city is launching an initiative to help minority women reach their full potential, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced Thursday.
The Young Women's Initiative will create a committee of advocates, policy experts and community leaders to identify ways the city can invest in new approaches to improve women's prospects. It is a multi-year effort modeled after the Young Men's Initiative created by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Like Bloomberg's effort, the Young Women's Initiative will seek to partner with philanthropic groups to determine necessary interventions, data collection and areas to direct public and private resources.
Some of the areas the group will focus on include education, economic mobility and health care.
“For too long, young women in New York City have experienced systemic inequality in all areas of life, whether its health care, education, or equal pay for equal work," Mark-Viverito said.
The data on black and Latina women when it comes to the issues that will be examined under the initiative are troubling.
Black and Latina women are less likely to graduate from high school than their white counterparts and more likely to live in poverty. The rates of new HIV diagnosis and people living with the disease also disproportionately affect Latina and black women.
"These injustices are especially pervasive for young women of color, who have been denied opportunity for advancement and success time and time again throughout history," Mark-Viverito said. "We are here today to say ‘no more.'"
