Karena Hooks remembers feeling that doors were closed.
“I had that voice in my head that attacks a lot of women,” she said. That voice was saying “I can’t do it” and “I’m not smart enough.”
Hooks, 33, quit listening to that discouraging inner voice. Instead, after completing an associa
te of arts degree from Everett Community College, the woman who was first in her family to go to college went on at age 24 to the prestigious New York University.
With an NYU bachelor’s degree under her belt, Hooks then earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Washington.
Hooks is interim director of outreach and diversity in EvCC’s Diversity and Equity Center, which combines the college’s Multicultural Student Success Center and Women’s Programs and Services. She is now in a position to share with others how she went beyond “dreaming small.”
Along with NYU, she applied to four other universities and was accepted by all of them. “The vision of what you’re capable of begins to change,” Hooks said Tuesday. Now, she is dedicated to providing opportunities and “serving as an inspiration to others.”
She is a woman working to help others attain higher education.
Hooks is also a statistic.
According to a sweeping White House report released March 1 called “Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being,” strides in education are a success story as growing numbers of women have earned college and advanced degrees over the past four decades.
The federal Office of Management and Budget and the Economics and Statistics Administration within the Department of Commerce worked with other federal statistics agencies to create the report, which covers family, employment, education, health care, crime and other aspects of women’s lives.
With statistics from as far back as 1970, some even earlier, “Women in America” is the first such comprehensive federal report since 1963. That’s when President John F. Kennedy established a Commission on the Status of Women. With former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as its chairwoman, that effort produced a report on the conditions of women.
At more than 80 pages, this new report produced in support of the White House Council on Women and Girls is impossible to sum up in a newspaper column.
Times definitely have changed. Highlights show not only advancements, but worrisome statistics.
Men still commit violent crimes at much higher rates than women. Yet since 1990, over a period when overall crime declined, women have represented a growing proportion of those in contact with the criminal justice system. Eighteen percent of those arrested for violent felony offenses in 2008 were women, up from 11 percent in 1990.
Women still live longer than men. Girls born in 2007 had a life expectancy of 80, compared with age 75 for boys. But from 1975 through 2007, the gender difference in life expectancy decreased from eight years to five years.
Despite educational progress, a hefty pay gap between the sexes still exists. Earnings for full-time women workers have risen 31 percent since 1979, compared with a 2 percent rise in male earnings. At all levels of education, though, women earned 75 percent of their male counterparts in 2009.
On Tuesday, which was International Women’s Day, I also spoke with Laura Hedges. The 67-year-old Hedges worked 31 years at EvCC before retiring last May from her position as manager of women’s programs on campus.
Like Hooks, Hedges has an inspirational story. She weathered divorce, alcoholism, teen motherhood and joblessness. It took her a decade to earn degrees from EvCC and Western Washington University. She is encouraged by women’s progress, especially in higher education.
Hedges, who lives in the Smokey Point area, wants girls to keep their eyes on the prize: education.
“A lot of girls, when I would go out to talk with students, still really thought their knight in shining armor was coming,” she said.
“There are resources to get an education. That definitely is the key to becoming self-sufficient.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Report on women
The White House released a report March 1 called “Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well Being.”
Information: www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cwg/data-on-women
See report: www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/Women_in_America.pdf
Key findings:
•About 28 percent of men and women had at least a college degree in 2009. In 1970, 8 percent of women and 14 percent of men were college graduates.
•In 2007-2008, women earned 57 percent of all college degrees.
•At all education levels, women earned about 75 percent as much as male counterparts in 2009.
•The percentage of married women declined from 72 percent to 62 percent between 1970 and 2009.
•In 2008, about 18 percent of women age 40 to 44 had never had a child, up from 10 percent in 1976.
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