US President Joe Biden targets gender inequality in latest orders

President Joe Biden will formally create a gender policy council within the White House as part of two executive orders he intends to sign on Monday to mark International Women’s Day.

 

The council will include a staff of four, three of whom will hold the title of special assistant to the president, according to a senior administration official who previewed the two orders.

 

The council’s mandate is to work across the federal government’s domestic and foreign policy to fight discrimination and bias, boost economic security, increase access to health care, and advance general equality through diplomacy, trade and defense.

 

The second order asks the Department of Education to re-examine the Trump administration’s policies and rule-making on Title IX, the 1972 law which governs the way sex-based discrimination in schools is handled. The goal, one of the officials said, is to ensure students have an education “free of sexual violence.”

 

The Trump administration also scrapped key Obama-era policies and put forward their rules which, among other items, said transgender students couldn’t use the bathroom consistent with their own gender identities. Biden’s executive order instructs the agency to make sure all policies related to Title IX are consistent with the ethos of the Biden-Harris administration.

 

Jill Biden honours women from 15 nations for courage

 

First lady Jill Biden says nearly two dozen women the State Department is honouring for their courage made an “intentional decision” to persist and demand justice despite their fear.

 

The 21 women being recognised Monday with the department's International Women of Courage Award include seven from Afghanistan.