The Center Launches as an Independent Center at Georgetown Law

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
CONTACT: GenderJusticeCenter@georgetown.edu

Introducing the Center on Gender Justice & Opportunity at Georgetown Law

With a decade of transformative impact and pioneering thought on gender equity and racial justice, transition formalizes and expands work.

Washington, DC – After ten years as an initiative of the Center on Poverty & Inequality, the Initiative on Gender Justice & Opportunity has launched as a standalone, independent Center within Georgetown Law. This shift will allow the Center of Gender Justice & Opportunity to deepen the reach and impact of its gender equity and racial justice work as it pursues its mission of working to eliminate gender and racial disparities in education, healthcare, and the justice system. The Center will remain rooted in the voices and experiences of girls and women.

“After celebrating our ten-year anniversary in the fall, we are proud to announce our growth as an independent Center within Georgetown Law and appreciate the support of our colleagues, partners, and funders with this advancement,” said Rebecca Epstein, Executive Director of the Center on Gender Justice & Opportunity. “The mission of our research, policy, and practice remains steadfast, in service of a just world where all girls and women have equal opportunity to thrive—and, as ever, with their voices and experiences at the center of our work.”

Over the past decade, the Center on Gender Justice & Opportunity at Georgetown Law has worked across multiple areas of focus – the school to prison pipeline for girls; sexual abuse and other forms of trauma that girls uniquely experience; barriers to healthcare access; restorative justice as an innovative alternative to punitive responses and police presence; and adultification bias against Black girls – and received national acclaim for many of its reports, including the 2017 release, Girlhood Interupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood. The Center’s next report, Criminalized Survivors: Today’s Abuse to Prison Pipeline for Girls, co-authored with Rights4Girls as an update of its 2015 publication on the abuse to prison pipeline, will be released in April 2023.

About the New Center on Gender Justice & Opportunity at Georgetown Law

The Center on Gender Justice & Opportunity works to uncover and eliminate gender and racial disparities across public systems — including education, healthcare, and the legal system. Their work starts with examining the root causes of injustice and is informed by the lived experiences of girls and women. The Center’s work is in service of a just world where all girls experience a childhood that is truly free.