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Philadelphia Holds Its First Ever State Of Women Conference

KYW's Cherri Gregg and Paul Kurtz contributed to this story.

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Philadelphia Commission for Women held its inaugural "State of Women and Girls in Philadelphia" conference Friday. It's was an opportunity for Philadelphians to be inspired by local leaders.

The half-day summit presented the Commission report on the state of women and girls in Philadelphia. It's purpose was to provide a snapshot of the diversity of Philadelphia's fairer sex, as well as data baseline to assess future progress of women and girls across the city.

A tutorial on credit card management was an eye opener for younger attendees such as 16-year-old Mya Wall.

"I never knew about credit score or any of that so I was just like, Wow! because I had nobody teach me about credit payment, scores or anything like that," said Wall.

Organizers combined practical advice with panel discussions on a broad range of topics that impact females. Keynote speaker Christina Tchen hopes her experiences in Washington will rub off here in Philly.

"We did a whole range of policies that promoted things like equal pay for women. We knocked down barriers to pay secrecy, said Tchen. "We did amazing work on fighting violence against women, led by VP Biden to making sure the Affordable Care Act has huge provisions for women's health."

The Philadelphia Commission for Women will collect stories and information from the summit in hopes of delivering new policy proposals to the Mayor and City Council.

"It's both pushing policies forward but also having practical information out there, you know, news you can use for women and girls," said Tchen. "That's something we tried to do from the White House and I'm really excited to see it happening her locally here in Philadelphia."

The summit applauds the city for creating a commission for women and putting the summit together.

Tchen added, "When all women succeed, then we are all succeeding."

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