Pay

Yesterday I did a workshop on Feminism and Eleanor Roosevelt for the Eleanor Roosevelt center at Val Kill's Girls Leadership Workshop (GLW)--28 bright, vibrant, up to any challenge young women from around the globe.
We spent a lot of time talking about equality. They were all taken aback that women are not paid the same as males for the same jobs. Women make on average 76 cents to the male dollar--that is white women--women of color make less: black women make 62 cents, Latinas make 53 cents. And, at the rate we are going since the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, it will be another 47 years or so before pay equity may be achieved because the act is NOT enforced. And even when it is enforced we have found that there are other obstacles.
Most notably the recent failure in the Senate of the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act. The bill was written to correct for last year's punitive (re)reading of the EEOC laws (See Ledbetter V Goodyear Tire Co): employees have to act within 120 days of the first instance of discrimination even if they are not aware of said discrimination until years later.
Pay equity seems very far away.

Especially when women are supporting their families--today even in dual parent households two incomes are necessary to make ends meet. Mike Hein called households in Ulster County with incomes of $50-60,000 the working poor--especially in light of the high cost of gas, home heating oil, and the increasing cost of food (not to mention medicine and health care).


How women came to be paid less than males is rooted in our capitalistic and patriarchial society. In the 1890s when the concept of working wages for families were first introduced, the focus was on the male "breadwinner's" wage--he was suppose to earn enough to support his family or his potential family. Women in the workforce where only earning supplementary monies--pin money. Overtime this working wage has gotten translated into the minimum wage. (Holly Sklar has a good website on the real cost of minimum wage--http://www.letjusticeroll.org/).
It is rooted in our glorification of capitalism--business must make a profit, if the cost of supplies are too high, the cost of labor is what can be cut to ensure profits. This glorification of capitalism does so without holding the businesses responsible to be good citizens--paying their fair share of taxes, for instance; or turning record profits on the backs of consumers and employees.

So, what can we do? Part of the campaign is to make women and men aware of the disparity. Another is to give women a political voice--we already know that there are more women democrats than male democrats in Ulster County; we need more women in elected and appointed office.

We need to grow women leaders!