Women have the power – why aren’t more of them using it?

Co-chairs of WomenVote PA, Carol Tracy, Executive Director of the Women’s Law Project, and Kate Michelman, President Emeritus of NARAL Pro-Choice America

AT A RECENT meeting a colleague of ours presented us with a challenge and posed the following questions:  Imagine if every woman of voting age participated in this upcoming presidential election? How would that determine the outcome of the election and the legislation and policy coming out of Washington?  What would happen – would anything really change?

The implications of such a reality are staggering.

For one, you would never hear any politician utter the phrase “legitimate rape” nor would a “transvaginal ultrasound” be prescribed by anyone other than a woman’s doctor; equal pay for equal work would be obvious; our reproductive rights would be championed by politicians, not jeopardized; support for efforts to end violence against women would be expanded; Social Security and Medicare would be stabilized and strengthened, not privatized and minimized.

Sadly, the question is hypothetical and the reality is quite the opposite – but we believe it doesn’t have to be. And we believe we can start by increasing the political participation of women here in Pennsylvania. In 2004, the Women’s Law Project, based in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, began an initiative called WomenVote PA. The goal was and is straightforward: Increase the participation of women in the electoral process. We are focused on making WomenVote PA a resource for voters to learn more about legislative and policy initiatives and, equally important, a community both in the real world and the digital world, a place that uses education, collaboration and information-sharing to mobilize women voters.

The focus on the November election all but guarantees more Americans will vote this November than in any election since 2008 (assuming voter-ID requirements don’t deprive them of their right to vote). In 2008, 6 million Pennsylvanians voted in the presidential race and yet just two years later, 4 million voted in the U.S. Senate race – a staggering 2 million Pennsylvanians who voted in 2008 failed to do so in 2010. That is likely over 1 million women not voting in off-year elections – and each of these off-year elections determine who sits in the Pennsylvania General Assembly as well as the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Increasing that off-year participation number even slightly has real policy implications and real-world effects on women.

A reason behind WomenVote PA’s re-emergence has been what we will generously describe as politicians simply “not getting it.” Whether it is using the phrase “legitimate rape,” attempting to define rape only as “forcible rape,” blocking legislation in support of equal pay for equal work, rolling back our reproductive rights or limiting protections for victims of domestic and sexual violence, WomenVote PA is active in educating our network on the federal, state and local legislation that affects their lives. We believe in assisting our elected officials and policy makers in “getting it.”

And we have the data to back it up. WomenVote PA is an initiative of the Women’s Law Project, which has just published a remarkable study titled Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women, which will inform our education and outreach efforts. The study provides important research and data about how ongoing bias against women – in the home, in the workplace, in the classroom, and in the community – negatively impacts women’s health. We see it as a necessity that women’s voices are informed and are heard on issues that are essential to their health and well-being and that of their families.

The question “What if all women voted?” really does set the mind reeling – but in Pennsylvania WomenVote PA will focus our efforts on seeing what happens when more women vote. We believe much will.

This opinion piece appeared in many newspapers throughout Pennsylvania.  Please share this with your friends and remember to vote!

Pay Equity Bill Voted Down in Senate

Nikki Ditto, WLP Summer Intern and Elizabeth Wingfield, Former WLP Intern

On Tuesday June 5^th, the Senate voted down the Paycheck Fairness Act in a largely party-line vote. The bill would have helped to strengthen already existing legislation on gender discrimination in the workplace, but proponents were unable to win the necessary 60 votes in order to pass it.

The Act would have required that employers prove that pay differences are based on qualifications and not on gender. U.S Senator from Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, explained in an article on the Huffington Post that the Paycheck Fairness Act would also help to reduce gender discrimination by:

• Prohibiting employers from punishing employees for sharing salary information with co-workers.
• Making discrimination costly to employers by making those who bring gender discrimination cases eligible for compensatory and punitive damages, as is the case with race and ethnicity discrimination cases.
• Developing new training programs for women and girls on how to negotiate compensation packages and recognizing employers who have eliminated pay disparities.

While the rate of women in the work force has increased, their salaries as compared to their male counterparts have not. As we have blogged about before,  “2010 census data shows women still make only 77 cents to every dollar a man makes. For women of color this discrepancy is even larger. African American women earned only 67.7 cents and Latinas earned 58.7 cents to the male dollar.”  This is all in spite of the fact that women, on average, are more educated than men, and are increasingly acting as dual-earners or sole providers for their families. Pay discrimination for women and minorities is a major problem that has important consequences for families and the economy. 

The Paycheck Fairness act was meant to improve upon previous legislation, like the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that was passed in 2009. Backers of the bill (largely Democrats) said the Act would have closed loopholes in the 1963 Equal Pay Act and that it is necessary to ensure pay equity. Those who opposed the bill (largely Republicans) argued that “they oppose pay discrimination but disagree with the Democrats’ bill.”

Though the Act only got 52 of the 60 votes needed to be passed into law, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, (D-Md), who was the chief sponsor of the bill, said that she would not be deterred and “vowed to return to the bill until it passes.”  Women, it seems, will remain a central topic for both this Congress and in the upcoming presidential campaigns.

To read the entirety of the Paycheck Fairness Act, click here.

Divide and Conquer: The Wal-Mart Lawsuits Are Back

Four months after the United States Supreme Court, without ruling on the merits of the sex discrimination case under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, told Betty Dukes and her co-plaintiffs that their lawsuit against Wal-Mart could not proceed as a nationwide class action, the plaintiffs have re-organized and are trying again with smaller, regional class actions that may be permitted by the Supreme Court case. 

We blogged about the original class action lawsuit in March, when the Women’s Law Project signed an amicus brief authored by the National Women’s Law Center and the ACLU in support of the plaintiffs.  The class included 1.5 million women who work or have worked for Wal-Mart, women we believe were properly joined together in a single class action because Wal-Mart’s discriminatory decision-making processes affected all of them.  As statistical evidence shows, female Wal-Mart employees in all regions earned less, held lower-paying jobs, and received fewer promotions than men, even though on average they worked longer for the company than men. 

In Wal-Mart v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011), the Supreme Court rejected the possibility of a nationwide class action, concluding that the members of the proposed class did not satisfy the requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 (a) of having questions of law or fact in common (“commonality”) and that their claim for backpay did not meet the requirements of Rule 23(b)(2).  By departing from established understandings of “commonality,” transforming it from a “threshold criterion” that is “easily satisfied” into a much harder inquiry to satisfy (see Justice Ginsburg’s dissent), the Supreme Court bent over backwards to make it harder for employees and consumers to challenge big corporations in court.

 Now, the battle is on again as women bring class action suits region by region: a case was filed against Wal-Mart in California federal court on October 27, and another in Texas federal court the next day.  Attorney Joseph Sellers says that we can expect to see an “armada of cases” across the nation in the near future.

By splitting up the nationwide lawsuit into many regional lawsuits, the plaintiffs hope to increase their chances at success by defining smaller classes and adjusting their arguments to conform to the Supreme Court’s anti-employee ruling.  Legal action against Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer and a bastion of gender discrimination, is as necessary today as it was when the plaintiffs originally filed their nationwide class action a decade ago. We continue to support the women as they pursue civil justice region by region.

Wage Gap Still Exists, Census Shows

Recently released 2010 census data shows the gender gap unimproved from the year before—women still make only 77 cents to every dollar a man makes. For women of color this discrepancy is even larger. African American women earned only 67.7 cents and Latinas earned 58.7 cents to the male dollar.  Despite the fact that women are becoming more educated than men on average, they still continue to have significantly lower salaries. As we have blogged before, this wage discrepancy is caused by numerous factors, but two significant ones are thought to be discrimination in the workplace and difficultly in balancing work and family life.

Unfortunately, this news is further evidence that progress towards wage equality is stalling. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that “over the past decade, the wage gap narrowed by less than one percentage point, compared with four percentage points between 1991 and 2000. In the decade prior to that, 1981 to 1990, the gap closed by even more: ten percentage points…”

To help women break the glass ceiling and to help the businesses they work for in the process, Editorial Director of Working Mother magazine, Jennifer Owens, suggests that companies start offering more flexible work schedule hours to help women  balance their work and family lives. If more companies offered flexible schedules the effect on narrowing the wage gap could be significant. Owens notes that

Pay levels are, in general, equal for men and women until about the age that women begin to have children. Once the pressures of family appear, women’s comparative pay shrinks, in part, because too many women are forced either to leave the workforce or dial back their careers to take over childcare duties. Once they return to work, women find their pay rate diminished. In fact, studies find the pay gap is actually worse between working mothers and women without children, than between women and men.

More flexible work hours would not only help female employees who continue to work after motherhood, but the companies they work for as well. Owens stated that “Flexibility has a direct connection to the bottom line in terms of reduced turnover and thus, lower costs for recruitment and training of replacement employees…it also ties directly to lower absenteeism.” Working Mother recently published a list of 100 Best Companies for mothers in the workforce. These businesses, as a result of offering paid maternity leave and flexible schedules, have benefitted from “higher productivity, increased engagement, lower turnover, and better health” of their employees.

To find out more about the struggle for pay equity and what you can do to advocate for fair wages, click here.

Women in Academia

Bestcollegesonline.com recently published a list of “15 Incredibly Inspiring Women in Academia.” The list includes such notable women as Marie Curie, Maya Angelou, and Judith Butler. Included in the list are brief biographical notes about the women’s respective accomplishments and the hurdles each had to overcome to achieve success in academia. Hopefully we have moved past the days when talented female mathematicians like Sophie Germain had to take on the identity of a male university student in order to gain a higher education. However, women have yet to earn equality in academia.

A 2011 study (PDF) published by Catalyst, “the leading nonprofit membership organization expanding opportunities for women and business” reveals some upsetting gender inequalities in academia. During the time in which the study took place, “women had fewer and lower percentages of tenure positions than men at doctoral, masters, and bachelor’s institutions. Women [also] occupied more non-tenure track positions than tenure track positions, and men overwhelmingly comprised  the majority of tenured faculty.” Indeed, the study found that only 24% of full professors were women.

The lack of women in academia seems inconsistent with the number of women in higher education. Indeed, “women continue to earn the majority of bachelor’s degrees, and are projected to earn in the majority of master’s [degrees].”Though the number of women faculty members doubled (PDF) from 1984 to 2008 and a lower percentage of men start out on the tenure track than women, Danielle L. Auriemma and Tovah P. Klein of Barnard College  found that “a much higher percentage of [men], compared to women, hold tenure, and far fewer [men] are on the non-tenure-track.”

An explanation for the lack of women in various career fields that “has been pushed by media” is that women “freely choose not to work after becoming mothers.” However, Auriemma and Klein show that statistics do not prove this claim to be true. Indeed, “the majority of educated women with young children [are] in the work force. In 2007, over 70% of women with children worked outside the home (Halpern, 2008). Statistics are similar for highly educated women in their thirties where 2/3 of those with a young child work outside the home (Boushey, 2005).”

Though the question of where the women in academia go and why does not have a definitive answer, many have pointed to an insufficient support system for mothers in academia as one culprit.  Female faculty members reported having to turn down speaking engagements and generally traveling less for work in order to accommodate their children. Female faculty members also reported having less time to have “uninterrupted, concentrated time- to think, to create new ideas,” necessary for an academic.

Male faculty members do not share the burdens of parenthood evenly with their female counterparts. An opinion piece by Sara Ballard and Gurtina Besla for The Harvard Crimson shows that this trend starts when future professors are in graduate school.

A 2008 GSAS study of graduate student parents found that graduate student mothers bore the primary responsibilities for childcare in the months after the birth of a child: more than half (55 percent) of the spouses of Harvard graduate mothers stayed home for four weeks or less, while only two percent of the spouses of Harvard graduate fathers stayed home for four weeks or less. The burden of childcare is undeniably borne more heavily by the women graduate students. This statistic is reflected in the findings of the UCBerkeleystudy that determined that tenured women professors in science are three times more likely to be single without children than their male counterparts (25 percent versus nine percent).

In order to retain talented female scholars in academia in light of the disproportionate demands of parenthood on women, the American Federation of Teachers’  Higher Education Department suggested (PDF) that faculty unions make gender diversity a bigger priority. Auriemma and Klein also suggest more

Institutional attention to providing, publicizing, and encouraging the use of policies that help faculty deal with professional and personal responsibilities [which] will both enhance the quality of the environment, making it more attractive to academic women, and help individual scholars fulfill professional and personal duties.

Auriemma and Klein also suggest a re-envisioning of the tenure-track model. They ask “what would it mean to envision a career over a longer time span, not over a 7 year span? Rather than a linear progression, peaks and valleys over time would be expected. What does it mean to invest up front and allow a woman to become a mother, then to see her productivity soar at a later time?”

To make sure young mothers may pursue a professorship, Ballard and Besla recommend childcare assistance programs be made available for graduate students as well as faculty.

Women, now the majority of bachelor’s degree earners, are still underrepresented in academia, particularly in tenured positions. In the effort to figure out the reasons for this disparity and to make the playing field of academia an even one for both genders we may look to the 15 incredible women that bestcollegesonline.com provides for us as inspiration.  These women are testaments to how important it is to make sure the next great mathematician or Poet Laureate has her talent realized.

(Photo from hvaldez1)

MIT Reform Brings Progress to Women in Academia, Highlights Societal Stereotypes

The New York Times recently published an article that raised the issue of women in academia, and how MIT has led the charge for increased female representation. The article highlights the progress, but it also calls attention to some unintended consequences that still negatively affect women.

But with the emphasis on eliminating bias, women now say the assumption when they win important prizes or positions is that they did so because of their gender. Professors say that female undergraduates ask them how to answer male classmates who tell them they got into M.I.T. only because of affirmative action.

Research conducted at MIT in the 1990s showed the extreme disparities between female and male professors teaching at the university, and illustrated need for change. Reforms were made, and the result was a dramatic increase in female opportunities at MIT.

More women are in critical decision-making positions at M.I.T. — there is a female president, and women who are deans and department heads. Inequities in salaries, resources, lab space and teaching loads have largely been eliminated.

With this dramatic growth in women’s representation came unintended consequences. Women are still called to panels to discuss work-life balance; something that is rarely asked of male colleagues. Also, women are faced with others believing that they were hired to promote gender diversity rather than on the basis of their work or accomplishments. But some at MIT dispute this:

“No one is getting tenure for diversity reasons, because the women themselves feel so strongly that the standards have to be maintained,” Professor Kastner said. Faculty members said that the perception otherwise would change as more women were hired and the quality of their achievement became obvious.

We admire MIT for leading the charge in promoting women in academia, especially in traditionally male-dominated fields, though it is unfortunate that this progress is overshadowed by pervasive stereotypes of professional women.

WLP Signs Onto Amicus Brief for Female Walmart Employees

The United States Supreme Court is set to hear a sex discrimination case brought against the largest private employer in the states. Although Walmart v. Dukes began with a small group of female workers, it has since grown into a class action including close to 1.5 million women who work or have worked at Walmart stores, making it the largest class action employment suit in United States history.

Without addressing the merits of the gender discrimination claim, Walmart is challenging the class action status itself. Walmart asserts that the plaintiffs are too diverse to qualify for class action status. If Walmart prevails in its argument, the female employees will have to file lawsuits individually. This would put women at greater risk for retaliation and make it less economically possible for women to pursue claims against Walmart.  Additionally, splitting the claims would potentially lead to many inconsistent rulings and increase judicial expenses, going against the spirit of Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which sets no limit to the number of class action litigants and allows cases to be more efficiently litigated.

The Women’s Law Project has joined in an amicus brief asserting that workplace gender discrimination is properly addressed in this class action and that this class is unified since subjective decision making practices affected all women within the class. The brief highlights evidence of general beliefs that women should not be primary breadwinners and other assumptions of women’s availability and competency which caused women to be devalued in the workplace and restricted promotion opportunities. There was also evidence that the employers were purposely secretive about payment of male counterparts who earned more than the female employees. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its decision on the case in June.

The National Women’s Law Center, which co-authored the brief with the ACLU, is collecting messages of support for the Walmart women. You can add yours here.

Wage Gap Woes: Women Continue to Face Pay Discrimination

A new study by the Project for Attorney Retention and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association has revealed that the glass ceiling is still present for female attorneys. The traditional explanation for wage disparities has been that “family responsibilities mean women are less ambitious, more distracted, and less productive than men.” However, the study’s authors assert that “the biggest contributing factors…are not nearly as benign: they include stereotyping, gender bias, and even bullying and intimidation.”

The study interviewed 700 female lawyers. One-half of the female attorneys who are equity partners and two-thirds of female minority and income partners felt dissatisfied with their compensation. This can be compared with a previous study that revealed that three-quarters of male attorneys are satisfied with their pay.

It is not just a feeling (PDF) that reveals that female attorneys receive lower pay than their male counterparts: “A recent Census Bureau report revealed that the median income of female lawyers is only 74% of that of male lawyers. Unfortunately, what starts as a $2,000 dollar annual gap between male and female associates accelerates to a $66,000 annual gap between male and female equity partners.”

Sadly, the wage gap is not limited to attorneys.  On average, women earn 77 cents to man’s dollar. The gap is even more striking for women of color. African-American women only earn 68 cents to every dollar the average man earns, and Latina women a mere 58 cents.

Economists say the gender gap is partly due to women taking more time off due to childcare duties and the fact that women are more likely to work in lower-paying jobs than men. However, though this may account for some of the gap, “even when you control for occupation and a host of other variables, economists still find an unexplained gender gap of anywhere from around a nickel to a dime or more on the dollar.” Wage disparities still hold when those studied have no children.

The continued existence of a wage gap is not only bad for women, but for the entire economy: “studies have found that closing the gender wage gap could result in significant GDP growth.”

The glass ceiling continues to be a reality for all women, even those who are partners in law firms. To learn more about current wage disparities in the U.S., read Time’s article that was published on this year’s Equal Pay Day. Equal Pay Day – April 20^th – marks the day when the average woman has earned as much as her male counterpart did the year before.

Photo by Tracy O

Historic Class Action Sex Discrimination Suit Against Wal-Mart

Six current and former female Wal-Mart employees will represent not only themselves in their sex discrimination lawsuit against the retail giant, but “‘all women employed at any Wal-Mart domestic retail store at any time since Dec. 26, 1998.’” This would include over a million women. The plaintiffs argue that their instances of discrimination are not unique, but “that the company’s ‘strong, centralized structure fosters or facilitates gender stereotyping and discrimination.” Their assertion is supported by not only their own stories, but 120 documented incidents from other female employees. If found guilty in discriminating against more than a million employees, Wal-mart could pay billions.

A federal appeals court certified the class-action suit, making it the largest class-action employment suit in U.S. history. Wal-Mart said in a statement that it was considering seeking review from the Supreme Court, but if the Court does not hear the case or hears the case and affirms the lower court’s decision, the lawsuit will continue on behalf of over a million plaintiffs. If it does hear the case and does not certify the suit, then female employees of the chain claiming sex discrimination will have to file individual lawsuits.

Wal-Mart claims that the complaints of discrimination from the six women are not indicative of systemic sexism. The women, however, say that while more than 70% of the Wal-Mart workforce is female, women occupy less than a third of management positions. The plaintiffs claim that, in general, women are “paid less than men in comparable positions, receive fewer promotions and wait longer for promotions.”

We will keep you informed about any updates in this case.

Women are Key to Economic Recovery Plans

On the eve of the G20 summit, Heather Arnet of the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania and Kavita Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women encourage the leaders attending the meeting to remember the importance of women in any economic recovery efforts.

First, they lay out the dismal situation for women:

A main reason women are central to the global economy is they make up 60 percent of the global work force. In ordinary times, women and girls are the majority of the world’s poor and illiterate, but during recessions, the disproportionate burden is placed on women who are more likely in vulnerable jobs, are underemployed, lack social protection and have less control over financial resources.

Worldwide, women make up about 70 percent of those living on less than a dollar a day; add children, who disproportionately depend on women for their care, and you have the majority of the world’s poor.

A new report by the international agency Plan International found that the global recession is hitting girls the hardest because they are the first in their families to go without food, to be pulled from school and to lose jobs. The report forecasts that 22 million women will become unemployed, driving more girls into the sex trade.

They discuss the situation of women in Pittsburgh, the G20 host city, as being pretty much up to speed in most areas with the rest of the world: the wage gap has women making less than 70 cents for every dollar a man makes and there is a startling absence of women on many corporate boards or publicly traded companies based here. And most of the money in the economic stimulus packages went to work in repairing the physical infrastructure of our society, which is dominated by male workers.

But the authors argue that we need to invest in the social infrastructure of our society as well, in the industries of education, public health and child care, where women are disproportionately employed.

The world leaders meeting this week should also not fall into the trap of thinking of women as helpless beings who need to be served by economic policy, but as able agents making those decisions themselves:

Women need to be considered, not just as those being served by development programs, but they need to be at the decision-making tables in increased numbers. Research has confirmed that women are better at mitigating risk, and a recent study showed that banks with at least 30 percent women in senior management positions were far less likely to have made risky and unsustainable loans.

One of the only two female finance ministers of the G-20, Sri Mulyani of Indonesia, is credited for her work in putting Jakarta’s financial house in order by dismantling the cronyism that plagued Indonesia’s financial architecture from the Suharto era. Indonesia now enjoys one of the most conservative balance sheets in the world and over 4 percent economic growth — and Ms. Mulyani is credited for her role as a tough regulator.

…

While we cannot add more female finance ministers to the G-20 table this year, we can demand that our world leaders begin to respond to the overwhelming amount of data that points to the immediate and long-term economic gains of investing in the development, education and economic security of 60 percent of the world’s work force.