Introduction: What's Wrong with this Picture?
In 1990, for example, the United Way gave
the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) $39 million
more than the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA).
The Boy Scouts received $32 million more than the Girl Scouts
from United Way affiliates. Allocations for Boys Clubs (now
called Boys and Girls Clubs) and Girls Clubs (now called
Girls, Inc.) show a more extreme discrepancy, with Girls,
Inc. being outfunded seven-to-one.
Of $3.25 billion given in a sample of
1990 foundation grants, only 5%, or $165.8 million, went
to programs specifically aimed at women and girls.
There's an even greater need for advocacy
and services among women of color, who are three times more
likely to be poor than white women. Out of a sample of 2,700
foundation grants that went to women and girls in 1989,
only 110, or 4%, went specifically to women and girls of
color.
The small burst of fundraising activity that
moved women's programs from a mere 2% of the pie in the
mid- Seventies to only 5% today is viewed as if it "solved"
the problem of "past" under-funding. Funding women's programs
is seen as out-of-vogue today by many large foundations.
Worse yet, according to the National Council for Research
on Women, many professional fundraisers believe that having
Swomen" or "girls" in the name of an organization or as
the focus of an organization's grant proposal is the "kiss
of death" for successful fundraising from the largest foundations
or agencies.
Programs Serving Both Sexes Are Biased
Both private foundations and public charities
are quick to point out that most of their grants go to "broad-
based" programs that serve everyone. In practice, however,
the broadbased programs usually offer more to men and boys
than to women and girls.
At Big Brothers/Big Sisters, for example,
boys get a much bigger share of the pie. Of the 60,000
young people that the organization served in 1990,45,000
were boys, meaning that only 25% of those served were girls.
This was in spite of the fact that there were far more Big
Sister volunteers than Big Brother volunteers.
(Empowering Women in Philanthropy,
The Empowering Women Series, No. 3; A Publication of the
Feminist Majority Foundation, 1991.)
|
