National Women’s Equality Day 2020

The SAVMA Cultural Outreach Officers with the help of our Integrative Communications and Diversity Committee put together this incredible statement for National Women's Equality Day. 

Today, August 26th, 2020, SAVMA recognizes and celebrates National Women’s Equality Day. This day commemorates the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens on the basis of sex¹. As we acknowledge this milestone in our nation's history, we must also reflect on the current status of gender equality within the veterinary profession, as well as the ongoing needed efforts to address gender discrimination that continues to persist.

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If it's raining women, why are all the men reigning veterinary medicine?!?!

Editor's note: This is a guest blog by Karen Bradley, founder of the Women's Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative. The Vet Gazette is expanding content beyond the structured categories, and we are starting with a post from the founder of this important organizatin. Read on for more!

By now you have seen our press release for the Women's Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative (WVLDI).  I am writing this post to try and provide some of the answers to "what is it" and "how does it relate to me?"

First of all, I will confess that I impulsively launched a closed Facebook group and Linked In group by these names a few weeks ago when it became painfully clear to me that the time to try and be proactive about getting more women veterinarians involved in organized veterinary medicine leadership was now.  I was fortunate to have teamed up with Dr. Stacy Pritt who coordinated a website for the initiative.  We are thrilled to have almost 300 members in the Facebook group and the website and Linked In groups are rapidly expanding as well. These groups have become a place for sharing articles about women in leadership, polling folks about issues women face in these leadership positions, and basically setting up a way to network together and support each other in pursuing leadership opportunities.

We would love for veterinary students to participate and bring their voice to these platforms!  Please don't hesitate to join us!  We are only just beginning to realize the full potential of this initiative and in the next few weeks will have a pilot group exploring the formal next steps of creating a non-profit or similar to provide a formal structure that can be even more effective at engaging, empowering, and motivating more women to be leaders in our profession--in all levels and areas. So stay tuned!  

If you have a request for a speaker to present at your school for a forum or symposium, please feel free to contact myself or Stacy Pritt and we will do our best to make it happen! 

(Karen Bradley, DVM karenbdvm@yahoo.com or 802-272-6442. Stacy Pritt, DVM, MS, MBA at stacy_pritt@yahoo.com or 858.790.9208)

Thank you in advance for your awesome enthusiasm,and support for this effort!

Karen Bradley, DVM

Press Release: Women’s Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative

First released August 5th

Founded during the 2013 AVMA Convention, the Women’s Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative is announcing today that it has a solid online presence with the launch of its new web site and logo at www.womenveterinarians.com. With a strong social media presence on Facebook and LinkedIn, the Initiative has created the new web site to further its reach through Twitter, blogs, links, and other resources.

Formed as a response to the disproportionate amount of women in leadership positions in organized veterinary medicine, most notably with the AVMA, compared to the number of women in the profession, the Initiative provides a support network for the promotion of women veterinarians as leaders. The mission of the organization is to gather veterinarians and friends to help “develop, encourage, and mentor female leaders for our profession.”

Karen Bradley, DVM, Founder of the Initiative, is excited about this next step. As she states, “my goal is to empower more women veterinarians to be active, appointed, and elected to leadership positions at all levels of organized veterinary medicine. I see a growing disconnect between the demographics of those in veterinary leadership and those populating the profession. Too many people think this will self- correct with time but that has not been the case in other areas—for example, the US population is greater than 50% women yet our US Congress only has 20% women.”

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