Mayor Eric Garcetti will be celebrating Women’s Equality Day this evening by signing an executive directive calling on city departments to implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which the City adopted in 2004.

“Our city only succeeds if everyone has an equal shot at success. For too long, our women and girls have been left behind and counted out, and I want Los Angeles to lead in employing and empowering women,” said Mayor Garcetti. “With this executive directive, we recognize that while we still have far to go, we can make progress — by working collaboratively, measuring what we do, and trying innovative approaches.”
The directive requires each General Manager or Head of Department to submit a Gender Equity Action Plan by February 1, 2016 to implement a gender-equity strategy that:

  • upholds an inclusive work environment that promotes fairness and fosters the equal participation of women in leadership positions at all levels;
  • tracks recruitment in fields where women remain underrepresented (such as public safety, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and addresses such underrepresentation;
  • tracks contracts and promotes ways to ensure equal contracting opportunities for women-owned business enterprises;
  • evaluates City services to discover ways to increase gender parity and to promote equal opportunities for, and the advancement of, women and girls;
  • provides any raw data regarding sex and gender on the City’s open-data portal;
  • identifies and develops baseline metrics regarding the status of women and girls; and
  • publishes to the online Gender Equity Dashboard metrics and indicators related to the status of women and girls.

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