Happy Friday! Welcome to our Media Round Up. Each week we’re collecting and sharing our favorite gender + politics stories. Here’s what caught our eye this week:

The White House issues its first-ever proclamation on Black maternal health.

Alisha Haridasani Gupta, The New York Times

The White House issued a statement on Tuesday for the proclamation of the first ever Black Maternal Health week in order to bring awareness to the crisis surrounding Black maternal mortality rates around the country. The U.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world and this is in large part due to the extreme and disproportional mortality rates among Black mothers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 700 women die due to pregnancy or pregnancy-related complications in the U.S. every year, and Black women are three times more likely to die than white women.

You can read the full article here.

Biden to nominate the first woman to serve as Secretary of the Army

Eleanor Watson, CBS News

Earlier this week President Joe Biden made history with his announcement to nominate Christine Wormuth to Secretary of the Army, she would be the first woman to ever serve in this position. “Defending our nation from enemies foreign and domestic requires a deeply experienced and capable team grounded in a commitment to our nation’s ideals and a keen understanding of the sweeping challenges facing our arm forces today. The President’s nominations today will help us build that team,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a statement. ” Wormuth previously served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy for the Obama administration.

You can read the full article here.

Louisiana congresswoman Julia Letlow takes office, replacing late husband

Alan Fram, The Advocate

On Wednesday, Julia Letlow was sworn into the House following last month’s special election to fill in the seat left vacant by her late husband, making her the first Republican woman elected to Congress from Louisiana. Letlow’s husband, Luke Letlow, was elected last year but never got to serve as he died in late December from COVID-19 before the new Congress convened. The special election was a smooth win for Letlow, who effectively outraised her competition and won the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.

You can read the full article here.

Equal pay is key to the economic recovery for women workers

Robin Bleiweis and Jocelyn Frye, MSN News

Last year our country faced two major crises: the coronavirus pandemic and the prevalence of racial injustice. These two crises highlighted a problem that lawmakers have continually failed to attend to, the need for policy that protects women’s jobs and wages. In order to reach a full economic recovery, it is crucial that we strengthen workplace protections and boost women’s economic standing. Between February and December 2020, women lost approximately 1 million more jobs than men between, with women of color making up a bulk of these losses.

You can read the full article here.

Around the World, the Greatest Gender Disparities Are in Politics

Kaia Hubbard, U.S. News

According to data from the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender Gap report, it will take over 135 years for the world to reach gender parity, an over 35-year increase from last year’s report. The report measured four sectors – political empowerment, economic participation, health and education. The most extreme gender disparities are seen in the political empowerment sector, which looks at political representation at both lower and higher levels. There are broad implications to gender parity in government, national feminist initiative She Persisted calls women’s equal representation in politics a “precondition for truly inclusive and representative democracies.”

You can hear the full piece here.