DENVER - Women in Colorado earn 80 cents for every dollar a man makes, and that wage gap plays a deciding role in how and when women can securely retire.

Jennifer Norr, president of the Women in Pensions Network, said women more often work part-time jobs than men, making them less likely to have a retirement plan through the workplace. Women also are more likely than men to leave the workforce to care for children or other family members, which Norr said impacts their ability to save for retirement.

"They don't make as much as men, they're currently paid about 80 cents on the dollar, and that's worse for women of color," she said. "It's all the more reason why women need resources like pensions so that they can retire with dignity."

Companies that offer retirement benefits largely have abandoned pensions over the past decades, in favor of lower-cost contributions to individual retirement accounts including 401(k)s, with values linked to the stock market. Norr said any form of retirement savings can help keep women out of poverty in their sunset years, but noted that pensions provide a stable, guaranteed source of income.

Female employees make up 60% of the public-sector workforce, and Daniel Doonan, executive director of the National Institute on Retirement Security, said most city, county, state and federal jobs come with a defined-benefit pension: You earn the benefit during your career, and upon retirement, that benefit is paid out through your lifetime.

"If you retire at 65, you'll receive a monthly check for the rest of your life," he said, "and you may also have a spousal benefit, if you pass away and your spouse continues living."

He added that women also experience higher health-care and housing costs in retirement, since they live longer than men, putting women without pensions at greater risk of outliving their savings. In a 2020 survey, two-thirds of older people reported they're more afraid of running out of money in retirement than death.


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Today, the day after the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, comes a chance to put our ideals into action on the sixth annual National Day of Racial Healing.

Everyone is invited to log onto the virtual event, which will feature a performance by singer John Legend and roundtable discussions with social-justice advocates.

Dr. Icela Pelayo, program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which sponsors the event, said everyone can reach out to friends and family to talk about racial equity.

"When we take the time to see the humanity in one another and develop and repair our relationships, we are in a better position to advance racial equity and to fix our broken systems to cause the great injustices," Pelayo asserted.

The event starts at noon Pacific time today on dayofracialhealing.org. The website also has tips on how to engage in authentic conversations about racial healing and encourages people to share their own experiences using the hashtag #Howweheal.

In 2021, the City of Los Angeles created an Office of Racial Equity, an effort started several years ago at grassroots community dinners.

Pelayo pointed out the Day of Racial Healing is designed to start the conversation, so communities can decide what needs to be fixed and move forward.

"Whether they want to focus on various systems like housing or health care or transportation, justice, the economy," Pelayo outlined. "Communities know what they need, and therefore they definitely set the agenda."

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the Golden State is marked by wide racial disparities in criminal justice, health, wealth and education. And a 2016 study from UCLA found white households in L.A. have a median net worth of $355,000, while Mexican and African American households have a median wealth of $3,500 and $4,000 respectively.

Gov. Roy Cooper has signed a new executive order that directs cabinet agencies to consider issues of environmental justice when taking actions related to climate change, resilience and clean energy. Conservation groups are applauding the move.

The state will appoint an Environmental Justice Lead at each cabinet agency, tasked with increasing local residents' participation when projects are likely to affect their neighborhoods.

Daisha Williams, environmental justice manager with the group CleanAIRE NC, said providing a "point person" to tackle these issues will boost collaboration between state agencies.

"When they work together," she said, "it will result, of course, in more direct engagement with not only the agencies themselves but impacted communities to implement the needed remedies to foster the creative solutions that we need."

The order also called for more funding to increase public awareness about the health-related effects of climate change, and provide public updates on air pollution and heat-related illness risks and their disproportionate effects on Black and Brown communities.

Bonita Green, president of the Merrick Moore Community Development Corp., said she supports the executive order, adding that residents in her historically Black and increasing gentrified neighborhood feel they've been shut out of conversations on proposed development.

"The community is frustrated," she said, "the fact that development is just being shoved down our throats, and we have nothing to say about how our neighborhoods or communities are being developed."

Ron Ross, president of the Northwood Estates Community Organization in Charlotte, said families there are dealing with chronic health conditions from a lifetime of breathing polluted air. He said he believes the governor's latest action is a step in the right direction "for the communities that I live in - that are surrounded by highways, industrial facilities and so forth, and continue to be exposed to those situations on a daily basis."

The order also requires the state to update a greenhouse-gas inventory, to measure current levels of greenhouse-gas emissions and seek potential pathways to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

When plans come together for new retail centers and office buildings, policy experts and local leaders in Iowa said municipal and real-estate developers need to adopt a more inclusive mindset.

They said child care and accessible transportation should be on a project's checklist. The Greater Des Moines Partnership recently hosted a forum on the topic.

Dawn Oliver Wiand, president and CEO of the Iowa Women's Foundation, said their outreach has reinforced the belief child care is the number one barrier to economic success for women.

As it relates to development, she emphasized making sure a community has enough child-care workers who receive fair wages and benefits is key.

"If we can't figure out a way to step out of the box and creatively address that, we're not gonna have enough child-care slots," Oliver Wiand asserted.

She suggested businesses assisting with development investments not only help their staff, but also their bottom line by keeping more women in the workforce.

Wiand was on the governor's Child Care task force, which recently recommended a tax-credit program to incentivize employers to purchase available childcare spots for their workers.

Meanwhile, a regional transportation leader said more flexibility in public transit, such as non-traditional service hours, is important.

Luis Montoya, chief planning officer for Des Moines Area Regional Transit, said in his organization's long-term planning, it has found customers from different backgrounds prefer service that goes beyond the standard workday ride.

"The way people move about the community to drop their kids off to take night classes, shifts that are on the weekends or outside of what we would normally consider normal business hours," Montoya outlined.

He argued an expansive, inclusive transit vision should prioritize service information catering to those who speak little or no English.

The panel discussion also centered around needs to include input from those advocating for people with disabilities, noting they are not just consumers, but also business owners and entrepreneurs.