Ensure equity in jobs programs

While I understand Gregoire faces difficult choices in attempting to balance the state budget, I would like to recommend an essential criterion that “jobs programs” must meet to be considered fair to our populace: gender equity.

Several areas facing deep cuts in the state budget have high ratios of female employment, e.g., education, health care, and social services. In contrast, jobs Gregoire intends to create are in male-dominated fields, notably construction.

I believe it has become a reflex in our country to equate jobs programs with construction work, dating from Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) program, which unabashedly targeted young men.

Please, rather than tradition, consider the wide range of professionals currently unemployed in our state, who could benefit from a jobs program innovatively updated from the 1930s version.

Patricia Goedecke