Pay equity & CEDAW: How long must women wait?

FMF's Get Out Her Vote campaign encourages young feminists to vote around the issues we care about on Election Day, which is Tuesday, November 2nd. There are a number of reasons why it's important to vote in the mid-term elections, but I wanted to focus on two particularly timely issues: the gender wage gap and ratification of the UN CEDAW treaty.

Gender wage gap

Even though we have anti-discrimination laws, the gender wage gap begins immediately as young women enter the workforce and graduate from college, and it only widens over the course of their career. During her lifetime, a college-educated women will earn $1.2 million less than her male classmate will, just because she is a women. You know the stats.

So what can your feminist group do?

• Learn more. Read about the Paycheck Fairness Act currently before the US Senate, and get the latest wage gap data [PDF] from our friends at the Institute for Women's Policy Research. Discuss the wage gap at group meetings, and how you can take political action on this issue.
  
• Hold a pay equity bake sale on campus to illustrate the effects of the wage gap and raise some dough (ha!) for your feminist group.
• Work with your campus career center and progressive groups on campus to organize workshops on resumes, interviewing, salary negotiation, and feminist careers. A great off-campus resource is the WAGE Project, which conducts workshops specifically for college women. The WAGE workshop I attended as a student was excellent.
  

Moving right along to...

Ratification of CEDAW

The US is one of the last countries that has not signed the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (full text) human rights treaty. This treaty would serve as a full commitment to women's equality under the law, which we still do not have in this country (see also: Equal Rights Amendment).

Ratifying countries commit to:

● Take concrete measures to ensure women can enjoy basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.
● Establish judicial procedures to ensure the effective protection of the rights of women.
● Take appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by persons, organizations or enterprises.
● Submit national reports every four years on measures they have taken to comply with the treaty to protect and promote the rights of women in their country.

The Obama administration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton support ratification. A vote of two-thirds of the US Senate (67 votes) is required for ratification, and no action is required by the House of Representatives.

What your group can do:

• FMF is part of a broad coalition working toward CEDAW ratification in the US. Learn more at http://www.cedaw2010.org/
• Host a film screening and discussion of FMF's short DVD "CEDAW: The Secret Treaty." Email us at campusteam (at) feminist (dot) org to get your free copy, and use this CEDAW handout to facilitate the conversation.
• Ask your women's studies and international relations professors to cover CEDAW in class.

Got more ideas for spreading the word on pay equity and CEDAW? Leave a comment or email us!

And remember, vote on Election Day Tuesday, November 2nd!

This was post was featured in the September 2010 campus eZine. To join our mailing list, sign up here.

Equal Pay Act: 47 Years Later

47 years ago yesterday, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act. According to the Wage Project a professional woman will make $1 million less than a professional man in her lifetime.

I’m going through a phase right now where I’m not quite sure where I’ll end up in 5 years, most likely fighting the good fight in Women’s rights/Human Rights or still in school, but I will definitely be a professional woman, and it really upsets me (putting it lightly) that I could be missing out on ONE MILLION DOLLARS during the span of my lifetime. I mean just think of all the things you could do with some extra cash.

What's worse is that the stats we hear like "A woman makes 77 cents to every dollar a man makes." are not entirely true. That statistic should read something more like "A professional Caucasian woman makes 77 cents to every dollars that a man makes." Statistics can be presented in many ways and unfortunately pay equity statistics, in my opinion, are spun to look like the wage gap is much smaller than it actually is.

What about women and men who work blue collar jobs? How much less do those women make than men? (Correct me if I am wrong, but the statistics from the Wage project do not include these women)

Women of color make significantly less than 77 cents, African American women make 68 cents to every dollar, and Latina women make 58 cents (Que?!) It's just extremely disgusting to think that in 2010 women still get paid less because they are women.

"Because they are women"
Everytime I say this I take a moment to let it sink in, so that I always remember that I am a second-class citizen and that there still is a lot of work left for feminists.

Check out what President Obama said about Pay Equity yesterday.

I found this very interesting link from WAGE "What Are the Costs of the Wage Gap", check it out!

Oh a much happier note! Today Iceland made same-sex marriage legal! Yes! Equality Wins!

Photo Credit: AMagill on Flickr

Sugar Mamas

Quick listen: Are men marrying women just for their money?

Guest post: Smashing the gender wage gap!

Susan Logsdon, president of the Widener University FMLA in Pennsylvania, posts about the FMLA's work to raise awareness about pay equity. Happy Thanksgiving!

It is often hard for young women, especially college students, to think of ways in which feminist activism could help them. However, our FMLA has found that drawing attention to unequal pay between men and women is an effective way to inform people how relevant the feminist struggle for equal rights is to modern society.

In October, we held a pay-equity bake sale, inspired by the Feminist Majority Foundation, and we emphasized the fact that women still earn only 76 cents to every dollar that a man makes. No matter how educated a woman is or how many qualifications or skills she may have, she will still earn much less than her male counterpart simply because of the fact of her gender.

It is even harder for women in traditionally male-dominated fields such as science and engineering, as they face other discriminations and hardships due to their gender. Even fields such as nursing have unequal pay distributions; one study has shown that male nurses may earn in excess of 3,000 dollars more a year than female nurses. Both of these fields of study are highly represented and respected at our college, and the fact that these young women pursuing rigorous fields of study will still eventually earn much less than their male counterparts after graduation is deeply disturbing.

The ideas behind the bake sale also extended to another population of our college and many other colleges as well: older students who are either returning to college after an absence or who are getting their first chance at college in order to advance their careers. Many women in these situations are working while pursuing their degrees and may also have families to support as well.

They are attending college to make their job opportunities brighter or improve their current statuses in order to make things more promising for themselves. Yet, the unequal wage system does not honor such commitments; women who have had extra burdens such as a late start to education or families to support will still earn much less than their male counterparts.

Our bake sale emphasized all of these points, and we found that many people who stopped by our table were extremely receptive to the idea. They recognized the disparity between the wages of men and women and how this is unjustified. What was most encouraging was the fact that equal amounts of both genders supported the idea and recognized the faulty system that supports unequal pay as something inherently unfair; there were not any protests at the idea that one gender had to pay more than the other gender, and all seemed to realize the gravity of our message.

We felt confident that, through promoting a cause that is very real and pertinent to women of all different generations and backgrounds, we had given our college community a greater sense of what feminism is: simply the idea that women are as equal as men, not something that is meant to divide the genders.

Want to know more? Contact Susan at smlogsdon (at) mail dot widener dot edu. You too can cross post with FMF! Email campusteam@feminist.org to get on board!

Q&A: This is your brother on feminism

Reposted from Amanda ReCupido's blog The Undomestic Goddess. Amanda also started a fantastic Tumblr blog called This is What a Feminist Looks Like. Submit your feminist photos to amanda(dot)recupido(at)gmail(dot)com or to @theundomestic to be included!

The Undomestic 10: My Little Brother

This is my little brother, so I'm obviously biased when I say that he's awesome, and that he's sometimes (gasp!) funnier, smarter, and a (sometimes!) better writer than I am. Which is why I'm so glad to see his thought-provoking (and ever-sarcastic - it does run in the family) answers below. Not to mention he just turned the big 2.0 yesterday and started his second year of college, so please, give him due props in the comments.

Name: Mark ReCupido
Sex: Male
Occupation: Student

1.) Are you a feminist?
I agree with feminism but I don't do anything about it.

2.) What does feminism mean to you?
That I better learn how to cook and clean or I'll be considered a chauvinist.

3.) Who is one female (other than your mother) you admire, and why?
I'm assuming this should be a non-fictional female. I'd say I admire my sister because she stands up for what she believes in, is her own person, and is reading this. And even though she's big on women's rights, she doesn't let that get in the way of making me sandwiches every once in a while. (ed. note: I swear I did not put him up to that! But I am honored.)

4.) Are there enough women in leadership positions in your field?
That depends on what enough is. Do we want an equal amount of women, more women, or proportionally as many women who attempt to enter the field as men?

5.) Are men and women being paid fair and equally in your field?
I don't know. I'm not part of a field yet. And I'm not that nosy.

6.) How do media generally portray women? What is a good example of this?
In advertisements, that they will have sex with someone just for them using a product. But then, that implies that males will buy something just because a female will have sex with them. Seems equally as degrading to me. In movies and television, however, I think there's a fair balance of women characters who credit their sex and women characters who follow the stereotype we've come to know and love and hate.

Some women actually are like that, after all. Just as some men embody the stereotype that men like to degrade women, make homophobic jokes, eat only meat, drink beer, watch sports, and walk around shirtless. As for me, the only one of those that I'm guilty of is delicious.

7.) What can men and women do to reduce violence against women?
Men and women can stop attacking women. Violence is only the answer to making movies and video games awesome.

8.) How do you achieve balance between work and personal/home life?
By not having a job. But technically, that tips the scale pretty heavily to one side. I achieve balance between school and my life by enjoying many of my classes; planning out my time; and never hesitating to take a break to drink Snapple, eat Doritos, and watch TV if I have to.

9.) What is one thing you’d like to see happen for women in the next 5-10 years?
Forget feminism because it will no longer be necessary.

10.) What is one piece of advice you’d like to give to young girls today?
Don't keep up with the Kardashians.

The Undomestic 10 is a 10-question interview with men and women about feminism and how we can improve it. The Undomestic 10 welcomes anyone and everyone to shed light on how our society views feminism (even those who don't self-identify as feminists). If you think you have something interesting to add to the mix, don't hesitate to email me at amanda(dot)recupido(at)gmail(dot)com.

Link to all Undomestic 10 interviews.

Women: Still on the Defense

Last night, the interns and staff of FMF's DC office had a fabulous night out at the Washington Mystics game. The Mystics are Washington's WNBA team, and they were wonderful, beating the Chicago Sky 75-64. Of course, when it comes to the WNBA and women's sports in general, there's always fodder for the feminist blog.

For instance, yesterday it was relayed to me by a fellow intern that the WNBA capped the salaries for its teams (reduced from 13 to 11 players) at $900,000 in 2009. The salary cap for an NBA team? $57.7 million. No small wonder that much of the young talent in women's basketball is flocking to Europe to play.

The argument is that the NBA makes more money from the men's teams; critics insist that the WNBA has yet to even become profitable to the NBA, its "parent team." However, how can you expect the league to become profitable when its players are forced to spend their off months playing in Europe to subsidize their salaries and must shrink the size of their team roster just to make ends meet? The WNBA has only been around since 1997--why don't we give them some more time to build up a following and give them a chance to become profitable by giving them the tools to succeed on par with the men before concluding that they are a drain on the league?

When the subject is women's sports, there really is a whole smörgasbord of inequity to choose from, and salary differences are really just the start (I won't go into all the lovely sexual fetishism in which ESPN website commentators indulge when discussing the WNBA.) When you have a women's basketball league that exists as a tiny subset of the national league--a monetary investment that basically amounts to a rounding error of the NBA's total finances--you further the idea that women's sports are an afterthought. Men, once again, are the standard. And after all the initial outrage, my question is this: why aren't more people talking about this?

My suspicion: this kind of treatment has become the norm.

Picture courtesy of Ellen Saliares.