From Anne Gordon, V.P. of Programs:

 

Speakers Janine Mower (R), AAUW member involved in Woodstock town politics, and Jeannette Provenzano (D), long-time Ulster County Legislator, will share their experiences and perspectives on what it takes for a woman to succeed in politics today.

 

What: Branch Meeting
When: Tuesday, April 22, 7 PM
Where: Kingston Library

Whether you've been to Washington a thousand times or this is your first trip, you'll enjoy visiting Washington with great AAUW friends and without the hassle of driving, parking, cabs, or subway.

 

Schuster v. Berea College (adopted 3/06)

Claire Schuster, a tenured Associate Professor of Nursing at Berea College, sued the institution for sex discrimination in pay in violation of the Kentucky Civil Rights Act, as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress and breach of contract.

Claire Schuster began working at Berea College in 1995 as an Assistant Professor. In Spring 2001, she was awarded tenure, and in the spring of 2002, she was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. In May 2002, she received a letter informing her that her salary for the next academic year would be $47,000, which included a salary increase associated with her promotion to the rank of associate professor. The letter included a chart comparing the average salaries of faculty at Berea with those of other similar institutions.

Schuster's salary, according to this chart, was $5,000 less than the average for other Berea professors at her rank and only $600 more than the lowest salary within that salary range. At the same time, Schuster learned that the all-female nursing department had hired its first male faculty member at a salary that exceeded the salaries paid to female nursing faculty members, and that he had been hired directly into the associate level.

Believe it or not, this "game playing" with rank and salary grades is still going on, seventeen years after I left the business world. I was startled to read the facts of Claire Schuster's case as they are similar in every way to my working experience in the corporate world. Only difference mine happened 17 years ago, hers happened in 2006.

Are we making any progress?

The answer to that question is YES, YES, YES!!!! Nothing compares to the "light of day" on the practices of pay discrimination against women. We must support these heroic women who become litigants in suits against the universities and colleges. Come to convention, meet Claire Schuster and donate to LAF so that we can continue to shed light on the situation of pay discrimination.

Claire Schuster will be the guest speaker at the LAF Luncheon scheduled for April 28, 2008 at the AAUW New York State Convention, in Cooperstown, NY.

 

How does a stay-at-home mother espouse feminist values to her own children without diminishing the legitimacy of her own decision?

Her [Gloria Steinem's] answer, verbatim:

The goal of feminism is to honor and value all productive human work and open it up to everyone -- including work that has been devalued because women, the de-valued half of the species, do it. To say that homemakers "don't work" is a form of semantic slavery.

Actually, homemakers work longer hours, for less pay, under worse conditions (more violence, depression, drug and alcohol addiction etc.) -- and less security (more probability of being replaced by a younger worker!) -- than any other class of workers in the country. So we can help a lot if

1. we never say "I don't work," but rather "I work at home;" 
2. never put "just" in front of homemaker;
   
3. expect and require men to be homemakers and nurturers, too, whether that means husbands who cook, or sons who do their own laundry, or single moms who find male baby sitters and "mannies" so their kids grow up knowing that males can be as loving and nurturing as females -- just as women can be as accomplished outside the home as men.

If you decide to go back or into the paid labor force after your kids are more on their own, you could turn your homemaking life into a business-style resume: for example, you contracted for services, ran a budget, socialized new humans, did volunteer work that was a job in itself - whatever. We can do all that as individuals.

As a movement, we can also pass legislation to attribute an economic value to care giving at replacement level (whether care giving is raising children, talking care of elderly parents, AIDS patients; whatever), make this amount tax deductible in a household that pays taxes, or tax refundable in households too poor to pay taxes (thus substituting for the disaster of welfare reform). This Caregivers Tax Credit unifies the so-called soccer mom and the welfare mom because both benefit. You can find out more about this legislation, which just expands the refundability principle we won in the Child Tax Credit - though a lot of people don't know they're eligible; you should publicize that - to care giving. The website for the tax-credit campaign is caregivercredit.org.

For the global and economic implications of valuing what women do - a third of the productive work in developed countries and 2/3 in agricultural countries where women also grow much of the food their families eat - plus attributing economic value to the environment, you can see "Revaluing Economics," an essay I wrote in Moving Beyond Words. Or you can find still more in If Women Counted by Marilyn Waring.