After making campaign promises to close the Department of Education, (DOE), President Trump signed an executive order on March 20, directing Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take steps towards shuttering the department.

While the President cannot unilaterally shut down a government department, he can dismantle it to the point where it is can no longer function and enact the mandates for which it was created--as is currently being done to the Social Security Administration.

According to our guest, Katika Roy, a gender economist and media communicator (see her full bio below), if the Department of Education can no longer function, this will have a devastating effect on the aspirations of women to gain full equality in the U.S.

The Department of Education administers a number of the 'titles'--or parts--of the Civil Rights Movement of 1964, which in the absence of an Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. Constitution have had to fill in, piecemeal to form a patchwork of rights for women.

The DOE administers Title 1, which deals with poverty issues that impede education and administers Pell grants, of which girls and women are 62 percent of recipients. It administers Title 9, which deals with equal treatment in education, such as women's and girls' sports, and includes taking on cases of sexual harassment in K-12 and higher education, through a special branch of the Office of Civil Rights. It also extends to special education such as preparing girls for careers in STEM.

We will examine all of these effects of the gutting of DOE, with our guest, Katica Roy who is a gender economist and has written for a host of media outlets. We will discuss how much money will be lost to both individual women and girls--and society as a whole, if the Department of Education is dismantled.

This program will also include a feminist news roundup and topical music.

 KATICA ROY BIO

Katica Roy (COT-uh-Kah) is an award-winning gender economist. As the daughter of an immigrant and refugee, she is driven by a passion to eradicate economic inequality and champion the rights of refugees, women, and children. 

CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Bloomberg, Cheddar, MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, NBC, and Newsy have sought Katica for her sharp and unconventional take on the day’s headlines. She’s interviewed President Biden, Vice President Harris, Senators Booker and Gillibrand, Secretary Pete, Canadian Pay Equity Commissioner Karen Jensen, Sophia Bush, Eve Rodsky, Gretchen Carlson, and Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings. She has spoken on over 100 stages across the world including major stages at SXSW, CES, Web Summit, and for major corporations such as BNP Paribas, JP Morgan, P&G, Cisco, Google, and Microsoft. 

Her high-octane, visionary articles have been published by the World Economic Forum, Fast Company, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg, NBC, Entrepreneur, The Hill, The Advocate, Harvard Business Review, and Morning Consult. Her articles have garnered over 2.9 billion impressions. 

In 2017 Katica was named a Luminary by the Colorado Technology Association; in 2018 a Colorado Governors' Fellow; in 2019 a Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Business and awarded the Stevie Entrepreneur of the Year—Gold Award; in 2020 she was named the Colorado Entrepreneur of the Year; in 2022 a LinkedIn Top Influencer for gender equity. She is a member of Fast Company’s Impact Council, Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum, and The Aspen Institute’s Tech Accountability Coaliton.  In 2023, Katica was appointed to the National Women’s Business Council for a three-year term by US SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman , where she advises the President, Congress and the SBA on how to deploy the roughly $34B+ in set-asides for female founders.

Katica’s awards also include TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2019, Fast Company’s 2020 and 2023 World’s Most Innovative Companies, Fast Company’s 2021 Next Big Things in Tech, and Fast Company’s 2022 World-Changing Ideas