AAUW is a community that breaks through educational and economic barriers so that all women have a fair chance. Your membership makes AAUW’s powerful voice even stronger on critical issues affecting women and girls.

Share in the commitment to speak out on vital social, economic, and political issues.  These are the critical issues for AAUW:

• Pay equity
• Paid family and sick leave
• Access to reproductive health care
• College affordability
• The Equal Rights Amendment

AAUW’s policy work connects and rallies advocates at the local, state, national, and global levels to empower women and girls. With the member-voted Public Policy Priorities as our guide, AAUW uses lobbying and grassroots efforts to push forward policies that break through educational and economic barriers for women.

Reproductive justice is an important issue for AAUW members. Each January our branch has an activity or meeting focused on this issue. See our summary of our January 2025 webinar – with resources for action. We’re currently working on our January 2026 event.

As elections approach, AAUW develops voter guides. Here’s AAUW’s 2024 Guide to the issues, with questions about gender equity to ask the candidates, for various offices – whether local, state, or national. While AAUW does not endorse candidates for partisan offices, we can learn what we CAN do in elections as members.

The AAUW California Public Policy team (co-chaired by Silicon Valley member Amy Hom) publishes a monthly newsletter.  All issues are available from the AAUW-CA website. As an example, see what they say about the reality of Project 2025 – and what we can do: Public Policy News – February 2025 (page 2). As the first year of the current federal administration finishes, AAUW CA has reviewed the Project 2025 plans that have affected AAUW CA’s mission and goals. Click to watch the YouTube video of the AAUW CA webinar “Project 2025 Impacts on AAUW Values”. Learn what you can do to support AAUW’s efforts to ensure equity for women and girls.

AAUW California has also been strongly supporting DEI initiatives. To learn more about DEI, check out the YouTube video podcast privately  produced by Missy Maceyko (AAUW-CA Public Policy co-chair) and a partner:  The Intercultural Podcast. A recent episode: Is DEI Illegal?

As an AAUW member, you’ll be proud to belong to this nationwide group of people who value education and equal rights … who are contributing to a more promising future for all women and girls … and who together provide a powerful voice for women and girls—a voice that cannot and will not be ignored. Pay equity continues to be a major issue which AAUW has supported for decades. Around the country, there is a trend to ensure greater transparency about salary and compensation. These policies work.

Recent data shows that the pay gap is widening. In 2023, women earned on average 83 cents to a white man’s dollar. That dropped to 81 cents in 2024. For Latinas (58 cents) and Black women (66 cents) this gap is even worse. Read how AAUW is working to push back to keep our hard-earned gains in the area of pay equity HERE. This issue received media attentionally locally recently. Read about it HERE. Latina women earned 33 cents for every dollar a white male earns in San Jose, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara.

To combat these trends, AAUW offers free salary negotiation and financial literacy webinars and/or share them with a working woman that you know. Understanding a woman’s value at work and knowing how to grow and safeguard money are ways to fight the patriarchy that would like to keep women earning less. You can view the webinars and sign up for Work Smart, Start Smart, or Money Smart HERE.

For more information, please visit the national AAUW Public Policy page and the AAUW California Public Policy page. Both are full of information. AAUW is non-partisan and takes positions based on relevance to AAUW’s Public Policy program.

Our branch has begun a Public Policy Interest group which recently was involved in a postcard writing campaign (August/Sept 2025). The postcards were written to encourage irregular voters to make their voice heard by filling out a ballot. As AAUW is a nonpartisan organization, we worked with Reclaim Our Vote.

The six AAUW Branches of Santa Clara County support Strong Start, a SCC Office of Education Early Childhood Care and Education project. SCCOE’s mission is to provide universal childcare and preschool, with special emphasis on under-served communities in the county.