- I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order. My name is Julie Hardesty. I am vice chair. Susan
- is here with us on teams and is working things out and may come in and chair, but she's remote today.
- So there may be some technical challenges. So it is September 18th and this is the Monroe County Women's
- Commission. Thank you for being here.
- The Monroe County Women's Commission shall serve in an advisory role to assist residents, businesses,
- and the government of Monroe County in addressing issues of gender equity. The mission is to advance
- the status of women and marginalized genders in all areas of county life. So I think the first thing
- we have in-person quorum, so we're good there, and the first thing we need to do is approval of minutes.
- And the minutes that we have are, there's a couple months, right? July and August.
- and August. Has everyone had a chance to review those minutes? I was I looked at them. And do I do I
- have a motion to approve the minutes for July and August? Is there a second? I can for both for both
- months. All right. So since we've got one of our commissioners online, we do roll call vote to get that
- sorted, I believe. So we'll start. Eve, do you approve? Yes, I approve. OK. I don't know if I'm going
- to do this right. All right. And then Molly, do you? Yes. OK. And Jennifer? Yes. And Tiana? Yes. Maria?
- Yes. Julie? Yes. Susan? Yes. OK. And you all, we don't have to have votes from you for that. So we are
- good for a minute. Thank you. All right.
- Um, so, uh, commissioner updates, Susan, do you want to do a chair update? Oh, I'm sorry. We didn't,
- we don't have the approval. Yeah, we don't have to. Well, are there additions to the agenda? Let's go
- ahead and ask for that just in case. Does anyone have any additions for the agenda? I guess we also
- have new business. So I guess new business might be where that would come in.
- So I think we can go ahead with commissioner updates. So Susan, sorry, go ahead. Hello, everybody. I
- have a couple of little updates. One, I want to remind everybody that next month we meet on the Wednesday
- before our normal meeting. And it is the last Wednesday of their request. I think it's the 15th,
- not the 16th. So put that on your calendar. That would be great. And then the other one that I have
- don't listen to it yet, is that I was asked to go on Steve Bowman's podcast, the 812, as the chair of
- the Monroe County Women's Commission, which I did last week. Funny enough, he had incorrect information
- and thought that I was the chair of the Bloomington Commission on the status of women at first. And
- so during our onboarding, we had that whole,
- We figured that out and went forward and I got to talk about what we've done and the differences and
- some of the issues that we've had along the way. So it was good PR for us, but I have not listened to
- it yet and I'm sure it was terrible. So, and that's all I, thank you. When is that going to air?
- Do you know, did he say? It's on.
- It's live. It went live today. It went live today. OK. Thank you for doing that. That's pretty cool.
- OK, so I guess next up is vice chair, which is me for an update. And I do want to share information
- that I've been looking at in terms of
- health outcomes for women and marginalized genders in Monroe County. And I will send this summary over
- to you, Molly, as well for the minutes.
- The topic of health outcomes for women and marginalized genders in Monroe County was not actually as
- fruitful as I was expecting. I had some high hopes and then I started looking at things and it didn't
- actually break down like I was expecting. So the main sources I ended up going with were the Monroe
- County Community Health Assessment from 2021. So that's a really focused Monroe County centered assessment.
- And then County Health Rankings and Roadmaps for Monroe County from 2025 has some good information.
- the Indiana Department of Health, heart disease and stroke death rates in Monroe County offered some
- information that was useful as well in terms of women. The Human Rights Campaign, Healthcare Equity
- Index Map from 2024 was another resource that I looked at and got something out of. And then the Institute
- for Health Metrics and Evaluation has a Monroe County, Indiana profile from 2016. And that was actually
- pretty helpful and there were other things that I looked at that I looked at previously and they weren't
- they weren't very they weren't very helpful like the US census quick facts and data USA those reports
- that I've used with other topics and they weren't really
- they weren't really that helpful for this. So there's lots of sources for health data, but a lot of
- them do not break things down by gender at all. So you don't get that focus on looking at women's issues
- or marginalized genders issues. And so it's kind of limited for what I was finding. So then I went ahead.
- I did add in what I could find on gender affirming care and LGBTQ plus health care trends, because even
- when there were gender breakdowns for any of the health outcomes information I was finding, it was limited
- to men and women only.
- So, in general, it's like kind of some broad strokes here women in Monroe County compared to women across
- the state seem to be faring a little better in health health outcome indicators like incidence of breast
- cancer and death from heart disease or stroke.
- there are also indicators that women in Monroe County have access to preventative care, and at least
- some folks are paying attention to that and to those needs. 65% of female Medicare enrollees do get
- mammograms every year in Monroe County, so that seems good. And the Monroe County Community Health Assessment
- Survey from 2021 had almost 75% of its responses from women, so that was kind of interesting. I was
- not able to find anything recent about health indicators like cholesterol rates,
- or blood pressure issues or other types of cancer in terms of just looking at women, but it could be
- available by county, and I've got a little bit more on that later. So I had a hard time coming up with
- information by gender on mental health in Monroe County, and I was kind of surprised at that. I thought
- I'd be able to find something a little more specific than what I was finding. I looked at the Monroe
- County Community Health Assessment along with some state and national-level reports, but aside from
- suicide rates, I couldn't find any info broken down by gender. The Monroe County report
- And the court shows male and female suicide rates from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one, but there
- aren't any other other gender breakdowns within that.
- And the suicide rates per year among females is in the single digits and is a fraction of male suicide
- rates. So there's indicators like that that seem to show that women in Monroe County are faring somewhat
- better than other categories of folks in Monroe County. When I searched for life expectancy by gender
- in Monroe County, I did find healthdata.org, which is the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
- And they have county profiles that
- that I looked into for Monroe County. And that includes trends over various time periods for females
- in Monroe County in terms of life expectancy, mortality rates for selected causes, alcohol use, smoking,
- and obesity. So it gets into a lot of some of the things that I was interested in trying to find out
- about. And these all seem to be as of 2014, though. So it's kind of old data is the problem with that.
- And at that point in 2014, life expectancy for females in Monroe County was like a solid 82 years.
- more recent data is showing is not breaking not broken down by gender that I can find but is showing
- overall that life expectancy for everyone in Monroe County is going down and we're at an average of
- about seventy eight point five years as of twenty twenty four so so that's kind of and that's according
- to the county health rankings and roadmaps information.
- So, so none of the sources with county level information provided anything beyond male female binary
- breakdown. So there's nothing I could find specific to Monroe County about health outcomes for non binary
- or transgender people or other marginalized genders in our community.
- The Human Rights Campaign's Healthcare Equity Index was a source that I went to, and it shows facilities
- by state that responded to their survey that they put out, and how those facilities rate for LGBTQ plus
- inclusive policies. Planned Parenthood of Indiana is top ranked as a leader, and there are some other
- facilities in the Indianapolis area that also rank well. But those are facilities that actually responded
- to that survey.
- You can also search on other facilities, local facilities, by location, such as Bloomington, Indiana,
- which is a search that I did. And even if those facilities did not respond to the survey, many have
- been researched. And IU Health Bloomington Hospital is one that has been researched. And it did not
- rate well overall for LGBTQ plus inclusive policies. The Human Rights Campaign also includes a map showing
- states that have attacks on gender affirming care, and Indiana is one of those states.
- definitely healthcare challenges for marginalized genders in the state of Indiana.
- And the final thing that I want to share from what I was looking at, and I feel like this is still very
- surface. I feel like there's probably more to get to than I just wasn't able to find it. But it's a
- quote that I found from the county health rankings and roadmaps about the female designation
- as a demographic. And their quote is, understanding the percentage of the population that is female
- is important because of this group's distinct health care needs. The health of this population can also
- impact the health of the next generation.
- Thank you.
- The policies, practices, traditions, and norms that shape how supports are distributed among women and
- men have a large impact on communities. Females are more likely than males to have income below the
- federal poverty line. This impacts opportunities for health because income provides access to essential
- goods and services, including nutritious food, quality childcare, and transportation. Systems of power,
- such as racism, sexism, and economic exploitation, often interact and create layers of disadvantage
- for some and advantage for others. As a result,
- Black women and Native American women experience the largest burden of poor health outcomes compared
- to women in other racialized groups. Despite the systemic and structural forces that have been constructed
- to devalue women, women still have a longer life expectancy. So it's a very interesting way to end that.
- But yeah, all of those issues that they raise about how important it is to consider females as a group
- in terms of health outcomes in a community was an important point that I wanted to bring up.
- And I have the links to share for those sources that were helpful. And I can send all of that over to
- you, Molly. And the data subcommittee should be able to get to that as well, I think. That's useful,
- too. I think I'm putting these reports when I have them up there as well on Teams. That was what I wanted
- to share for that. And now I've already forgotten. There's a topic for next month, and I can't remember
- what it is.
- Are there updates from the Women's Commission members anyone would like there that's not it's going
- to be outside of whatever you're reporting for committee work.
- So who's your Asian-American power? I'm the co-chair of that organization, which is a statewide organization
- that advocates for Asian-Americans, predominantly women and non-binary and queer folk. So we have served
- or we did serve the state of Indiana with a complaint in July
- because we believe that they are in violation of the National Voter Rights Act, the NVRA, in terms of
- House enacted.
- House Enrolled Act, I always try to put those together, 1264 and then subsequently 1680 and SB 10, which
- we've heard a lot about. So this in short, hopefully, is that they're using the rules or the people,
- the lists at the DMV and putting them up against the voter roll list. So if those don't match up in
- terms of who's a citizen,
- And thank you for your face, Molly. And if those two don't match up, then they get flagged. And you
- supposedly get a letter in the mail, having 30 days to prove your citizenship.
- women and queer folk, we can very much understand how it might be difficult to have that paperwork,
- to prove our citizenship in terms of matching names on documents, in terms of, in my case, being a Korean
- adoptee, and there's all sorts of business going on where Korea has said, yes, we falsified your records.
- when we human trafficked you. So, you know, it could be that, you know, we don't create adoptees or
- people in certain, in similar circumstances, you know, do not have access to their paperwork to prove
- that they are naturalized citizens. So it's very harmful. And, and of course, who, you know, who benefits
- and who's impacted near. So,
- we always think about and ask those questions. So I attended a meeting, a round table discussion today
- that our clerk's office held and it was very lovely. It was a discussion, we were able to ask questions.
- Anyway, 39 people in Monroe County have been flagged and they have letters have gone out
- As of, I believe they said yesterday, the 17th, they've already had one man call in and say that he
- has been a citizen since he was three. Never had a temporary ID, which when you get a temporary ID,
- that's what's temporary ID at the DMV, that's what's flagging. But he never had one. And then another.
- lovely human being that I can imagine called in and said, I already know. I already know that I'm not
- supposed to vote. I'm not going to try to vote. And they were worried that they were going to get in
- trouble, deported, because they had been flagged. And they were like, we know. We're not trying to vote.
- The, oh, Ms. Ferris, she's the,
- something with election, the supervisor of election, something or other, said that all of the mistakes
- that have been made have been on the part of the DMV, not immigration, not naturalization. The DMV has,
- somebody said, I didn't register to vote, but they had went ahead and checked that they did.
- So this is very concerning. It's voter suppression. So anyway, it's important that people understand
- what that means and what's going on in terms of that. And what I'm asking the community to do is if
- anyone that you know or you receive one of those 39 letters, please get in contact with me.
- You can contact me at Maria at Hoosier AAP.org. So if it's you or you know somebody who has received
- one of those letters, please let me know. We being Hoosier Asian American Power are prepared to walk
- side by side with these individuals to get to rectify and right their situation. And we know how to do that.
- Another thing I wanted to mention that's not been talked about a lot here in this county, I don't believe
- is the rigging the attempts of our state government. And let's be honest, our national government attempting
- to rig the election through redistricting during a midterm session.
- So I'm hearing now that there's a potential midterm session that could potentially happen in November.
- We were here in October 22, but now it's November. And just so we're clear, it costs over $30,000 per
- day to have a special session. And that's the floor, if you will.
- So please just, we don't have the time today, but please educate yourself on what this rigging the election
- through redistricting. Sometimes it's called gerrymandering, but who's Jerry? Where's he going? Who's
- mandering about? We don't know, but it's rigging the election and trying to cheat. And again, who benefits
- and who is most impacted? Thank you.
- Does anyone have any other updates to share at this time? I don't have an update necessarily. But I
- heard it earlier today and was really impressed and want to keep an eye on the fact that IU is launching
- a new study on the health and performance of female athletes. And so I was excited to hear that. And
- I had it on my list to research a little bit more. But I just wanted to throw it out there to keep an
- eye on that and make sure it keeps happening.
- Yeah, I could flag that as another source to potentially go back to, yeah. Right. Once that study's
- further along, thanks. Do we feel that we can trust that source? I don't know, but I want to keep an
- eye on it. Yeah. Do you know the focus of the study? Besides being female, do you know the focus of
- the study? No, but I know they're working with national sources as well, and it's a collaboration.
- We'll have more information next month. I do remember seeing the headline pass by today in an email,
- but I have not looked at it, so yeah. I thought that was something. A win for now. Are there any other
- updates folks want to share? Do you all have any updates that you want to share?
- I'm sure people probably can't hear because I don't see your hearings for the council. The commissioners
- did vote on I believe the memorandum of understanding. Yes, related to the camp so that's exciting.
- That's we will get the will get an update on that in the committee, the subcommittee right. Yeah, excellent.
- I guess, are we ready to head on to the ongoing business portion? We're good? All right, so policy committee,
- as commissioner's hardest, Ian Douglas. And the purpose of the policy subcommittee is to evaluate county
- policy using a gender equity lens. So do we have updates? I've got the little update that I can share
- that we've been meeting. We've been meeting, and we've got
- a little bit more that we're wanting to do with the rubric and guidelines. I'm essentially going back,
- I did that kind of test run on that ordinance, the family leave, medical leave ordinance that was passed
- in 2024 and using the rubric on that and I got some results from that. And then based on our discussions
- with the gender studies librarian at Indiana University and kind of going back
- and looking through that to focus in on transgender needs and non-binary gender needs and gender needs
- that are beyond just women to see if there are any
- points or differences that were missed and what that indicates if the rubric has anything that needs
- to be changed about it to help help that consideration along. And so far what I'm what I was what I've
- done that work, and I'm not necessarily seeing that the rubric seems to be pretty good at encompassing.
- gender issues on a range of genders. So that seems to be good. I think the guidelines, we could potentially
- kind of nudge people to consider, because I did have a couple. When I was going through, focused on
- that, some of the outcomes, I didn't change scores. But some of the outcomes, I was thinking about it
- a little bit differently. And I had a little bit different note.
- note things that I was noting about the ordinance in terms of genders beyond just women. So I think
- maybe that's something to talk about when we meet next that we can look at if the guidelines can provide
- a little bit of a nudge in the instructions that way. Thank you for sharing that. And yes, it's on my
- to-do list.
- to go over the rubric and make sure that it doesn't incite any binary thinking is what it literally
- says on right to do it. Yes. Yeah. So that's where we are at this point. I'm kind of sort of hopeful
- that that is kind of our final step before we are ready to package this up. But we'll see how things
- are. Any questions? Or do we want to move on to the
- data committee. The data committee is up next, and that is Commissioners Hingle and Douglas. And the
- purpose of this committee is to become more grounded in who we serve through data. So are there any
- updates from you all at this point? Very exciting. We met and did some work. Susan? You talk about it.
- You probably took better notes than me, but we did. You talk about it.
- You want me to talk about, I'm sorry, you were kind of cutting out. So we met with the professor, Susan
- arranged for us to meet with the professor who did the capstone project that the Bloomington status
- on women committee worked on.
- So we're working with her. Again, it was a very, it was a good meeting in terms of exchanging ideas
- and setting next steps. I'm excited for this project because I am not in academia and I'm surrounded
- by academia and happen in life and then anyway. And so I'm excited to learn the steps and how we can
- set the students up
- you know, for success and to get the information that we would like. That's all I can think of at the
- moment. Do you remember off the top of your head about the policy question area that she was discussing?
- So one of the issues that we talked about by broader kind of what we were looking at with the data dashboard
- You know, some of our issues collecting data and for the county and the advantage that we had to tie
- that to policy questions for the students purpose and had went over a few of, you know, ideas for us
- handle, which was really interesting. I think one of the questions that I wanted to ask and see if either,
- either the commissioner or the counselor in attendance. I was informed that we would have to have an
- MOU with IU to make this study happen. Does anybody have any comments or know any more information about
- that potentially?
- Okay, Molly Turner King question, I feel like. Yeah, and she had mentioned Molly's the one that reached
- out to me, but I just didn't know if anybody had any other comments about that. I don't have any follow-up.
- This is Liz. Okay. Do you remember what day we met? Okay. Wasn't it the day after our last meeting?
- weren't you meeting the next day? Yeah. We met on Thursday, August 21st. I'm sorry, I was not prepared
- to report out. Me neither, I apologize. But we are moving forward. She's working on a written proposal
- for us. And then I feel like once we have that proposal, we'll be able to move forward working on an MOU.
- And that's all I really have. That seems pretty straightforward that once you've got that proposal,
- Molly Turner King can help you out if there needs to be an MOU or not, and then you can keep going from
- there. That's all I have. OK. Are you looking through? This could take days.
- All right. I mean, if you if you got something, we can come back to it. If there's something of note,
- I will. All right. Sounds good. So I guess the next committee is the outreach subcommittee, which is
- a commissioners Eroge, Belton and Otto. And the purpose of this committee is to elevate the profile
- of Monroe County Women's Commission programs that support our mission. And the current focus is the
- web design camp. Yeah, which is that's a win. We were happy about that. So
- We haven't met yet, but we will meet. But I have a report from Luddy that was given to me, just so you
- all... I was trying to show you the time, but whatever. It was just today, an hour before this meeting,
- let's say. So they're gonna start it on October 18th and every Saturday for six weeks. And the last
- day will be December 6th.
- But they're going to take a week off for Thanksgiving. They have 75 minute of instruction lesson workshop,
- working on the website, 30 minute break, 75 minute instructional lesson workshop, working on the website
- of the two people per group max.
- The students will build a base web page and then a branch off and be based on design and technical add-ons
- week after week. Students will present their designs to parents slash guardians and other students at
- the celebration ceremony. Snacks and drinks will be provided at every weekly class and then pizza and
- drinks will be provided at the closing ceremony. So this is on the books. It's starting in October.
- Oh, yeah. That's exciting. Yeah. As soon as that MOU went, they launched a committee and started meeting.
- So yeah, they've been meeting. So we'll meet the three of us, too, so we can make sure we're up to date
- every week. But they're meeting and making stuff happen. Excuse me, how many people will be involved
- in it? Like, how many can attend or whatever? You have two people per group, but how many groups, right?
- They haven't set a limit. They're going to send out. They haven't even gave me the application or sent
- it out yet. So the application needs to go out to the schools. And they were asking me how we did that.
- I said, oh, just send it out to every school. And so I'm leaving Luddie students and their professor
- in charge of that. I'm not trying to cross over any kind of legal ramifications there. Court back when
- you know. Yeah. So they just report to me. Great.
- And this is what I got. I was like, look, we need a report before Thursday. And so this is what I got
- an hour before coming, because they were doing some outreach down somewhere else today. So they sent
- this to me. But I'll find out and let you all know. Yeah, we get a lot of students. Because if there's
- opportunities for us as members of the Women's Commission to be there and help out or just be present,
- that would be really cool. Oh, yeah. They want us there. Good.
- Um, throw it all and whenever we want to pop in, um, I will, as soon as we get the advertisement and
- stuff, I'll send that out to our whole group too, because we want to know what it looked like as well.
- And our names be put on it. They probably will need something from us to advertise as well. Yeah,
- it's going, they hit the ball running as soon as that MOU was signed. Yeah, that's great. So start starting
- October 18th is the first session.
- October 18th. That's coming up. And I think they'll get, they might have talked about it because one
- of the leaders was down at an outreach event where about 650 something students throughout the state
- were there today. So I'm sure they've been talking about it. And I know Luddy, we have an outreach event
- happening October 4th where we're going to be advertising this too. So that's going to happen. Excellent.
- Is it just for students? Yes.
- students. I think they targeted third through seventh grade students last year, if I'm not mistaken.
- They have the MOU. So whatever we put in that MOU, that's what they're going to do. I can tell you.
- I think it is specified, the age range or grade range or something. So yeah. Yeah. That's what, I mean,
- I think that's what they definitely was sticking to with all this too. So yeah. Hey, Nichelle Whitney,
- this one's for you. Yeah. And I saw Susan, I saw you email
- that information from what Nichelle did. It's not operating like that. We have no control over that
- part. We let the Letty School do it, and we come alongside of them. So I won't. It's good for us to
- know, but I won't do anything with that, just to follow the MOU. But we'll need all the swag, because
- we have swag, so we can sit. Well, it says girls on it. Oh, we can't use that swag. We probably should.
- figure out how we can donate that or do something with that. We can put it out. I mean, I wonder if
- it's OK to put it out on a free table. Because when we do conferences and stuff, we have a free table.
- We give stuff out. But it won't say girls. It'll be this name. OK. Yes, thank you. That is spectacular.
- All right, I guess we are moving on to new business.
- Does anyone have any new business items? I don't know if this is a new business item, but there was
- discussion at some point, Eve, that you were interested in one of the subcommittees, and was it policy
- subcommittee? So were you able to get to anything that I sent you? Yes, I was looking at it right after
- you sent it to me.
- I may need a breakdown of how the rubric works, because it might have just been the formatting of the
- document I was looking at, but it was a little kind of confusing to try to piece everything together.
- Mostly because it was transferring onto different pages and whatnot, and it was just a little, it was
- like a big rubric. So I might need a little bit of a breakdown on that, but it looked really interesting
- from what I saw. All right, well that's the, I think with the,
- with the subcommittees, I was thinking that if you wanted to be on one of the subcommittees, is that
- like a vote thing that we have to do when we divide it up how we were doing that? I don't know if it
- is. If it's not, then you should just be joining us at the subcommittee meetings. But Susan, is there
- anything that you have there where we need to have some sort of vote or something for people being on
- subcommittees or switching around? Or does it matter?
- as long as it's not hitting quorum numbers. Do you all have any advice here? If you've got subcommittees
- doing stuff, do you have to do any sort of voting or anything that so-and-so is going to be on whatever
- subcommittee, or is it just fine for dividing up and working on things?
- Great. So I think, please, if you can make it for the next time we're meeting. Yeah, so that's next
- Thursday, right? Is it? I think you might be right. September 25th, I believe, is the next time we're
- going to be meeting, correct?
- Yes, we will meet, yeah. So yeah, we'll be meeting next. So what time is it, and is it here, or? No,
- it's going to be like an online. Oh, it's online only. OK, perfect. Yeah, if that works for you.
- All right. I will add you to that invite, and you'll have the information there to connect up. Great.
- Sounds good. Thanks. And that's good feedback on that, on the rubric document. Thank you. And I think
- it'll be good to, I think it'll be helpful, because we've been
- We've been looking at it a lot. For a long time. And so it'll be nice. It'll be helpful to verbalize
- things to you. And then you look at it and see if what we're saying makes sense. So just having it,
- yeah, neutralize. If we could just get it limited to a page or something, or a pretty big PDF or something,
- then it would be easier to
- understand what all was going on. But since it was like separated into like so many pages and why not,
- it was just kind of difficult for me to like grasp what all was happening. The guidelines document does
- have a few pages on it and the rubric is like within that. So, yeah. That's good. Thank you. All right.
- Awesome. Are there other new business items that folks have? All right.
- Susan, I'm going to check in with you one more time. Do you have any new business that you need to bring
- up? I can't even tell if she's on anymore. She's muted again? OK. You're muted, so we're going to kind
- of keep going. OK. All right, I guess now is public comment time. Are there any public comments from
- anyone attending in person or online?
- Please, someone come and make any comment, any public comment someday. We would be very happy. We'd
- be so excited. And I believe if you're online to make a public comment, all you have to do is raise
- your hand, right? Yes. Raise your hand on Teams, and you will be promoted to be able to make your comment.
- believe is our meeting and I think we will adjourn at 613. Thank you very much.