California Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins addressed women’s issues at the UC San Diego Women’s Conference in the Price Center East building Friday, where a breadth of activities, workshops and panels centered on female empowerment took place.
The event marks the eighth annual UCSD Women’s Conference, fittingly held in March, which is Women’s History Month. In her speech, Atkins touched upon a broad variety of social and economic challenges that women in San Diego and across the nation are currently facing.
This included the topics of equal pay and job opportunity, along with more affordable access to childcare and family-friendly workplaces. The topics ranged from reproductive rights to human trafficking in San Diego.
“I look and see that our reproductive rights are continually under attack. We have a leading presidential candidate who has no problem making inappropriate remarks about women. Or anybody else, actually,” said Atkins. “It’s 2016, but sometimes it sounds an awful lot like 1960 and we want to continue to work to change that. Empowerment can come in many forms.”
Atkins discussed how human trafficking is a significant threat to young women in San Diego, and how the process of de-criminalizing victims, who had previously been treated as prostitutes by law enforcement, is still underway. According to a study by the University of San Diego, sex trafficking represents about $810 million revenue annually.
“It has become a thriving business,” said Atkins. “Criminals realize that they can sell drugs once, but they can sell a girl over and over again. Even worse the average age of these victims is 14 or 15 years old.”
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She later urged women to become more involved with politics, even if this only means taking small steps such as volunteering to support a campaign.
In addition to that, she referenced a New York Times study that found a link between hiring female CEOs and increased profits for the companies.
“Many companies are still slow to change. Less than five percent have a female CEO and more than 50 percent have no female executives…” said Atkins. “And that’s despite a startling finding in the study, if the number of women in top jobs at a company rose by 30 percent, researchers found profits rose by 15 percent. That is remarkable.”
After her speech, the participants of the conference broke out into an assortment of sessions.
Psychologist Samantha Rafie hosted “Wellness Assertiveness Training: Speak Up for Yourself!” The focus was to help women develop communication skills to be direct and confident.
Career Development forums were hosted by Millicent Scott, Suzi Harris, Roxy Farkas, Kelly Jenkins-Pultz and Karina Jones. They offered professional tips ranging from salary negotiation to LinkedIn Profiles and advice on resume design. There were also workshops on the impact of Gender in the STEMM fields with Dr. Wendy Campana and Dr. Pamela Cosman.
Kelly Jenkins-Pultz, the Regional Administrator of the Women’s Bureau for the U.S. Department of Labor, presented a seminar on salary negotiation skills to help women close the gender wage gap.
She said that if women continue to make progress at the same rate, they’ll have to wait until
2058 to reach the same salary levels as men.
While four series of workshops ran simultaneously at the event, there was also a fair with 40 vendors. This fair included many small, local businesses owned by women. The event ran from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., finishing up with a networking happy hour at The Loft.
