Emily Moto Murase

Dr. Emily Moto Murase has served as Director of the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women since 2004. The only local agency of its kind nationally, the Department has a budget of $8 million and is governed by the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women, founded in 1975, which remains the strongest Commission in the country. Using the landmark 1998 San Francisco CEDAW Ordinance as a policy framework, Dr. Murase has led her 7-member staff to pioneer new strategies for implementing women’s human rights at the local level that has resulted in greater workplace flexibility for working women including expanded lactation accommodation and 6-weeks of fully paid parental leave. She has also played a critical leadership role in developing policies and programs that eliminated domestic violence homicides to zero for nearly 4 years (2010-2014) and securing a publicly-funded 24-hour response to child sex trafficking in 2015. In 2013, the Department, together with the Women’s Intercultural Network, and the NGO Committee on the Status of Women New York launched the “Cities for CEDAW” campaign, which now includes dozens of U.S. cities and will expand to cities around the world.

Dr. Murase’s work has been recognized by the 2010 Gender Equality Award from the UN Institute for Training and Research, the 2012 International WorkLife Balance Award by the Lombardy Regional Government of Italy, the 2013 San Francisco Collaborative Against Human Trafficking Modern Day Abolitionist Award, as well as, coverage in reports of the Ford Foundation, the Columbia University Human Rights Law Review, and Ms. Magazine.

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