Women, at least in America, may have come a long way, but ? surveys say ? there?s still a ways to go.
With gender inequities ? such as in earning power, representation in society?s power centers, and in instances of abuse and violence ? continuing to handicap Maryland women across a gamut of social and family law matters, one local nonprofit is creatively trying to correct the imbalance.
“Our mission is to protect and promote the legal rights of women,” said Tracy Brown, executive director of the Towson-based Women?s Law Center of Maryland. “We do that in a couple of ways. We help individual women with our direct services, and then we also work at a systemic level to try to make policy changes that will help many women.”
A 35-year-old legal assistance organization of 250 members, 11paid employees and a stable of contract attorneys, the center strives to level the legal playing field for women (and men) through its lobbying and advocacy operations and, more directly, through its free hotlines, forms-help lines, reduced-fee custody project and domestic violence initiative.
“Our newest hotline is the employment-law hotline,” Brown said, noting that, like the center?s family-law hotline, the service affords free, personalized legal advice from attorneys to people calling in at designated times. “We surveyed the community and found that there was no place where citizens could get easily accessible information and advice about employment-law issues. So we established the employment-law hotline.”
The center also offers a free reduced-fee service ? a statewide effort that the center administers only for Baltimore City ? that funnels grant money to private attorneys working on child custody cases at reduced rates. And its domestic violence project, with a multiethnic companion program, provides free representation for victims of domestic violence in Baltimore City and Baltimore and Carroll counties.
“We have provided funding to them for many years,” Susan Erlichman, executive director of the Baltimore-based Legal Services Center, said of the group, “and they are [a] particularly effective and efficient organization that provides a tremendous service to people in Maryland each year.”
Asked what legal issues are of particular importance to Maryland women today, Brown replied that there is a “constellation” of family law issues ? especially domestic violence ? that “the court system works hard to address,” but that issues of equity, particularly financial equity and “health of families after divorce,” are also pressing.
