A new report indicates there are barriers holding back Arkansas women from fully entering the economy. That report comes from United WE, a Missouri-based think tank that focuses on women’s labor force participation and civic leadership. The report is a culmination of four in-person town halls across the state, as well as a virtual statewide town hall.
Wendy Doyle is United WE’s president and CEO. She says the main objective of these town halls was to listen.
Doyle: Just to make sure that we are on point with what we should be prioritizing as an organization, but educating and sharing more broadly across the state of Arkansas. So some of what we learned, a top shelf priority is just around caregiving more broadly in the state of Arkansas. And that ranges from child care, but it also includes elder care as well. And depending on where you’re located in the state, you have more accessibility to resources than more rural parts of the state, but it certainly is an economic barrier. It’s a workforce participation barrier. It’s something that we learned and want to keep top of mind for the state of Arkansas, to figure out what we can do to make it easier to keep families in the workforce…