
Educating Texans to Champion Gender Equity
Travis County, Texas
Greetings!
We are seeking funding to overcome the persistent problem of gender inequality in Texas. Women are 50% more likely to live in poverty than men, and the wage gap for men and women by race and ethnicity is considerably greater here than nationally. Even in richer areas, such as Austin-Round Rock, women earn 22% less than men for comparable jobs. This gender gap extends into political office as well: although 2021 sees the all-time high for the number of women elected to state office, that all-time high is only 27% of the legislature. The problem starts early: during childhood. Texas has the nation’s largest gender gap in educational achievement. Recent legislation has shown that these gender gaps have very real consequences for the lives of Texan women and men alike.
Teach About Women is a non-profit that aims to solve gender inequality by addressing its root cause: an education system that sidelines women’s history and stunts their potential for success. Teach About Women provides K-12 teachers and students with resources, curricula and training to become champions for gender equity. Most textbooks, learning guidelines, and history programs around the nation leave women out almost entirely. This makes it difficult for even the most motivated teachers to include rich material about women or gender inequality. By providing teachers in Travis County with a four-year curriculum and accompanying online training on gender-inclusive teaching, Teach About Women can ensure that young Texans grow up empowered to advocate for gender equity and understanding the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity and poverty. This solid foundation will build the base for a brighter future, one where the gender gaps in achievement, political power, and wages disappear.
Founded in 2018 and based in Austin, TX, we are a young organization. Your donation to this program will put Teach About Women on the map in Texas and bring national attention to our empowering programs. With your help, we will give every student in Travis County and beyond the skills and knowledge to champion gender equity in their lives, communities, and workplaces.
Sincerely,
Georgina Emerson (Founder, Director and Chair of the Board)
Michael Kideckel
Mary Adair McGrath (Board Member)
Shelley Murray
Kemeyawi Q. Wahpepah
Educating Texans to Champion Gender Equity
Project Aims: What will we make?
Teach About Women, an Austin-based nonprofit, seeks $50,000 in funding to create:
A comprehensive, four-year Social Studies curriculum aligned with Texas educational guidelines that instructs students about the rich and varied experiences of women and the history of gender inequality. Our curriculum uses evidence-based teaching practices that encourage students to create equitable and inclusive societies. Social studies teachers, grades 9–12, can use this curriculum to replace or supplement their current program. (Funding required: $40,000)
A 8-hour, self-paced, online training course to help teachers integrate themes relating to gender, sex, sexuality, intersectionality, trans identity and social justice into curricula in Texas and beyond. (Funding request: $10,000)
We will make these resources available for free to every K-12 educator in Travis County for two full academic years. Our strategic engagement team has extensive experience in Texas and will ensure that they market and distribute them to every school in the county.
What will our program include that the current curriculum does not?
Our program transforms how students in Travis county and beyond learn about women, gender and power. It ensures that they will graduate with the skills and knowledge to make gender equity part of their lives, communities, and workplaces.
Impact: Educating 57,000 Texans to champion gender equity
We will offer our curriculum for free to the 72 public high schools in Travis County serving 57,600 students. 70% of these students are non-white, mostly Latino. These students will go on to become informed champions of gender equity, expanding the impact of our curriculum to the broader Texan and national community. The training course will be offered to all teachers, giving educators skills and guidance they can utilize in all their future teaching. As the student population in Travis County is expected to continue growing, training educators will have an increasingly large impact on future generations of students.
Who are we?
Teach About Women is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit that envisions a society where everyone has the same opportunities to learn, thrive, and lead, regardless of gender. We educate young people to champion gender equity in their personal lives, communities, and workplaces. With that in mind, we provide K-12 educators with resources, training and certification to integrate gender equity into every aspect of school life, from curriculum to school policy.
Over the next five years, our goal is to educate 1,000,000 students to be champions for gender equity in their lives, communities and workplaces. This grant would allow us to reach an additional 7000 teachers at 72 schools to give 57,000 students the skills and knowledge to be champions for gender equity.
Our diversity and inclusion statement
At Teach About Women, we believe our work is strongest when our team reflects the tremendous diversity of the students, families, and educators we serve. In our community, we value a wide range of identities and experiences. We define ‘women’ broadly, welcoming those who identify as femme, trans, non-binary, and gender expansive. Following the lead of Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, we also acknowledge that many women face multiple and intersecting forms of oppression. We actively seek to address the ways that gender intersects with systems of oppression such as racism, classism, ableism, heterosexism, colonialism, and xenophobia. We recruit BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ educators and seek to partner with organizations from communities that have been historically underserved by America’s schools.
What is the problem?
Right now, a Texas student can take four years of high school history and hear the names of fewer than 20 women. They learn about one major accomplishment by a group of women: female suffrage. And in fact, the current guidelines require students to learn about that same accomplishment every year, during “Freedom Week.” This single week of instruction covers a range of “freedom themes” ranging from the US Constitution and the Emancipation Proclamation to abolition movements and immigration experiences.
Lacking knowledge about the history of women and the mechanisms of gender inequality, Texas students understandably struggle to understand not only the challenges that face girls and women particularly, but the limitations set on all individuals in a sexist society. Political power is still overwhelmingly dominated by men in Texas: only 27% of elected state officials are women in 2021. If Texans don’t have historical context for understanding women’s experiences, how can they begin to imagine a future of gender equity?
What is our solution?
We go beyond “Freedom Week” to create a truly gender-inclusive and empowering Social Studies Program. Teach About Women is re-envisioning high school history with a radically new curriculum for grades 9-12. Designed to supplement history programs, this four-year scope and sequence re-envisions not only what we teach in history class, but how we teach it.