“A Bolder Way Forward” Launch Event

This event is the formal launch of Utah’s “A Bolder Way Forward” (BWF), which focuses on making Utah a place where more girls and women can thrive in any setting (e.g., home, workplace, congregation, and community). This initiative focuses on creating change in Utah faster, better, and more effectively.

National and statewide studies continue to show that women and girls in Utah are not thriving in critical areas. Year after year, Utah continues to have high levels of domestic violence, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and gender-based discrimination, while also ranking as the worst state for women’s equality and having low levels of women’s leadership representation in nearly all domains, including politics and business. Although the needle has moved slightly in a few areas, with its current trajectory it will take two, three, or even four decades to make notable progress. It is time for Utah to embrace a BWF, because when we lift Utah girls and women, we lift all Utahns!

The BWF is framed around systems thinking, which is that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” In Utah, we have been working on related efforts for too long using the “parts” strategy; we need to shift and move together as a system. If we are serious about ensuring that Utah women and girls thrive, we need to create change by 2030, with a check point in 2026. See utwomen.org (“A Bolder Way Forward” in the top navigation) for more details.

This event, hosted at Zions Bank Technology Campus, will discuss the BWF and provide time for leaders of 18 “spoke” areas to briefly describe their area of focus, bold goals, measurable outcomes, and how to get engaged. Areas include childcare, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, entrepreneurship, finances, gender pay gap, health across the lifespan, higher education attainment, home and family, Pre-K-12 initiatives, leadership development, organizational strategies and workplace culture, political and civic representation, poverty and homelessness, sexual assault, sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination, STEM fields, and workforce development. Overarching “rim” areas (e.g., identity, confidence) will also be introduced.

Come and join us for this gathering to learn more and then dig in during the working lunch to dialogue about how to move forward and identify critical next steps. Be part of the solution!