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.