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STEM and Women’s Economic Security

July 2, 2009, by adamzimmerman

Today, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that another 467,000 jobs were lost in June 2009, and the unemployment rate has risen to 9.5 percent. The worst of it may be behind us, but the economic recession is clearly still with us. AAUW works on a number of fronts to help improve the U.S. economy, and one of the major areas of our work is bringing more women and girls in the STEM fields: science, technology, education, and mathematics. The lack of women and girls in STEM fields has significant implications for women’s economic security as well as the overall economy and America’s global competitiveness.

That was the message I sent on Monday, when I testified on AAUW’s behalf before the National Science Foundation’s Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE). CEOSE is a congressionally-mandated advisory committee that “encourages full participation of women, minorities, and other groups currently underrepresented in scientific, engineering, and professional fields.” The portion of the CEOSE agenda in which AAUW participated concerned the topic of “Women and Underrepresented Minorities in STEM: a Science Policy Perspective.”

Our statement described both past and current ways in which AAUW has worked to ensure that women and girls have the same opportunities in the STEM fields as men and boys. AAUW has been a leader in this field since as far back as 1920, when we awarded a grant to Marie Curie for her groundbreaking research on radium! Today, our foundation still provides at least $3 million annually to women scholars and our branches provide Tech Savvy camps to girls across the country. In addition to funding grants and programs, AAUW also supports a number of initiatives that will enhance gender equity vis-à-vis the STEM fields: proactively using Title IX as an enforcement tool to improve the climate for women and girls in STEM fields; measuring student achievement in science, as we currently do for reading and mathematics; and training our teachers to better encourage girls to pursue STEM careers in the face of gender-based differences, peer pressure, and parental expectations.

The National Science Foundation has recognized AAUW’s pioneering efforts in STEM-related advocacy. AAUW currently has two NSF grants funded by the Gender in Science and Engineering division. One of the grants supports the National Girls Collaborative Project, focused on increasing opportunities for K-12 girls in science and engineering. The other is a dissemination grant to publish, promote, and distribute an AAUW report highlighting recent key research findings about girls and women in STEM. AAUW is hopeful that funding aimed at bringing more women and girls into STEM fields continues to be a priority for the Obama administration.

AAUW’s work in promoting opportunities for women and girls in the STEM field goes hand-in-hand with our work promoting pay equity. Employment opportunities in the STEM fields — most of which are filled by men — are traditionally of the higher-wage variety. During the current recession, women make up a higher percentage of the workforce than ever before, not to mention often serving as sole breadwinners for their families. Creating opportunities in the STEM fields for women, then, isn’t just about a moral imperative. The economic security of American families depends on our success in this endeavor.

Millions of smart, capable and motivated women and girls stand ready and able to enter the STEM workforce. It’s up to us to ensure that they’re given every chance possible to succeed and thrive.

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Posted in Students and Educational Issues, Women and Economic Security | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Did You Know?

July 2, 2009, by christyjones

Like almost a thousand other attendees at the 2009 AAUW National Convention held this past weekend in St. Louis, I watched the video Did You Know? as part of the opening Breaking through Barriers plenary. Take a second and watch it if you haven’t already; it gives a powerful portrayal of technology’s impact on the global society in the recent past. It’s astounding.

It did make me pause, however, and wish that all our efforts (and millions of others’) on behalf of equity for women and girls had moved as fast as technology’s impact on other areas. During her speech at convention, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) told us that, as of April 2009, “1 million women head of households couldn’t find a job, a group that is at a 10 percent unemployment rate. And the burden is even larger when women earn only 78 cents to the dollar a man makes.” The Paycheck Fairness Act is still waiting to be passed — and may not be if we don’t urge the Senate to pass it.

The journalist Mary Lou Forbes, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of Virginia school desegregation in 1959, passed away on June 27. Her obituary included her description of getting a job at the Washington Star newspaper. She said she thrived in the news room “as long as editors did not think she was married or planning to have children.” In the late 1950s, she became one of the paper’s first female editors. When she was hired, she recalled, the newsroom’s top executive asked her, “Do you think that men will take orders from you?”

Yes, I realize this was back in the 1950s, but just last week the daughter of a friend of mine heard a rumor that she hadn’t been promoted because her employer “figured ‘this newlywed’ would be getting pregnant and going on maternity leave soon anyway.” I immediately sent her links to our AAUW resources, including our legal referral network and a recent LAF Update that focuses on a study entitled “Women Still Face Pregnancy Discrimination.”

So while we are amazed at the speed of change shown in the Did You Know? video, we must also recognize that some things, such as equality, are not changing at the speed they should be. This is where you and I and anyone interested in equal opportunity must still keep pressing forward. I know — let’s use that technology! It certainly got our current president elected; maybe it will speed the pace of change for issues that have dragged on long enough.

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Posted in 2009 AAUW Convention, Equity in the News, Women and Work | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Is there a need for Men In Power

July 1, 2009, by aauwguest

In March 2009, Steve Saltarelli published a satirical article in the University of Chicago’s student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, entitled “Men in Power: true equality means groups that advocate for men as well as women.” Strangely, students at the elite school where fun goes to die were evidently unable to discern the obvious satire in the article, which includes such ridiculous suggestions and observations as

Firstly, we will be hosting weekly study breaks/screenings of movement-oriented films, including: A Few Good Men, 12 Angry Men, Men of Honor (and many other Cuba Gooding Jr. masterpieces), All the President’s Men, and — of course — X-Men.

Additional upcoming events will include an open-mic night on issues concerning body image, a tutorial on barbecuing, and our much-anticipated workshop “Protecting What’s Yours: Drafting a Prenuptial Agreement.”

Instead of receiving the message that Saltarelli intended — that it would be foolish and humorously misguided to start a student group to enhance status of those who are already afforded a disproportionate amount of power and privilege — students flooded Saltarelli’s inbox after the article’s publication with notes asking how to get involved in the fictional group.

Later in the spring semester, the alpha chapter of Men in Power was founded with the dubious mission of helping men access the resources to get initiated into the professional workforce. Equally as confounding is the fact that Saltarelli is now the organization’s president.

Supporters of the group point out that organizations like Men in Power are necessary because the recent economic downturn hits male dominated fields—like construction and manufacturing — the hardest, while female-dominated fields such as nursing and education have job stability. Never mind that men currently occupy an overwhelming percentage of upper-level jobs in America’s top 500 companies (around 85 percent),that men make up 97 percent of CEOs in the most recently published Fortune 500 list, and that working women earn 20 percent less than working men (a cruel reality that President Obama hopes to address).

These supporters miss the point that this group does little to help men maintain job security in unstable fields because it myopically focuses on the “professional” workforce. More importantly, the relative security that comes with female-dominated jobs has tradeoffs, such as limited growth potential and a painfully evident ceiling.

Supporters similarly argue that groups like this are increasingly needed because, since 1981, women are earning 135 undergraduate degrees for every 100 degrees men earn, with a ratio of 1.5-to-1 at the master’s degree level. Yet, as the most recent AAUW research report notes, women’s gains in educational achievement have not come at the expense of men’s achievements, and education is not a zero-sum game. Indeed, as the report points out, the problem is that both women and men in low-income households are falling behind; and their working-class parents are most affected by the economic downturn.

My main problem with such a group is that it squanders the opportunity to create a men’s group that could address real issues that systemically affect men — like the tendency for violent crime against men to be committed by other men or the alarming instances of fatherlessness in America.

Unfortunately, with a leader unwilling to explain his own satire or abide by his own criticism and with a student body eager to join him, it appears unlikely that such a group will come to be.

Written by Tom Rosen, 2009 AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund/Leadership and Training Institute summer fellow.

Posted in Sex Discrimination, Sexism, Students and Educational Issues, Women and Work | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Ricci v. DeStefano

June 30, 2009, by hollykearl

In a decision that could have far-reaching implications for employers and the labor force nationwide, yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of the firefighter plaintiffs in the case Ricci v. DeStefano.

In Ricci, 20 white firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter sued the city of New Haven, Connecticut, for throwing out the results of a 2003 promotional exam for which they received passing test scores. Since only one Hispanic and not a single African American firefighter received qualifying scores, New Haven feared the test had a disparate impact on minority applicants — which in the city’s estimation would have resulted in a violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — and thus decided to withhold offering promotions. The suing firefighters, in turn, argued that their Title VII rights protecting them against employment discrimination had been violated by the city’s decision.

District Judge Janet Bond Arterton dismissed the firefighters’ suit before it went to trial, ruling the decision to discard the test results was justified under the law. The case then went before a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which unanimously affirmed the lower court’s decision. The case proceeded to be heard by the full 2nd Circuit, which upheld the panel’s ruling in a 7-6 decision. An appeal was then made to the Supreme Court.

In March, AAUW joined the National Women’s Law Center, in conjunction with the National Partnership for Women and Families, in signing an amicus brief in support of the defendants prior to the oral arguments before the Supreme Court. The brief AAUW signed was in support of the city of New Haven’s position that if the court were to rule in favor of the petitioners, it could severely chill efforts by employers to comply with Title VII and eliminate sex-based barriers in employment. Unfortunately, the court ruled in favor of the petitioners.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, was joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John Roberts in ruling that New Haven violated Title VII. “The city rejected the test results because too many whites and not enough minorities would be promoted,” Kennedy wrote. “Without some other justification, this express, race-based decision-making violates Title VII’s command that employers cannot take adverse employment actions because of an individual’s race.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter, and John Paul Stevens dissented. Justice Ginsburg wrote the minority opinion decrying the decision, in which she argued that the city of New Haven acted appropriately toward the goal of eliminating all race- and sex-based barriers in the workplace, considering that persons of color comprise 60 percent of New Haven’s population and there is a history of race discrimination in the firefighting department in that city.

The law still requires employers to avoid policies that are discriminatory in practice, and we hope that despite this ruling, employers will try to make sure they are providing equal opportunity in the workplace for their employees.

This blog post was co-authored by Adam Zimmerman, AAUW regulatory affairs manager.

Posted in Women and Work | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

It Happened in St. Louis — AAUW Panel on Gender Discrimination in the Workplace

June 29, 2009, by aauwguest

The panel conceived of in the dead of winter had finally convened in hot, muggy Saint Louis at the AAUW national convention on Sunday morning. The theme — gender discrimination in the workplace. I can already hear the groans from you, dear reader, who thought that topic was a dead horse. After all, haven’t woman conquered the board rooms, the operating rooms and the court rooms? Not really and not so fast.

First, the audience. Not typical. Every woman there had earned a college degree, most of them when women just didn’t need an education or it wasn’t fashionable or even possible for women to go to college. Every woman there had committed part of her life, the giving part of her life, to making sure woman and girls everywhere had the opportunity to become educated. Every woman there believed that a higher education affords women to emerge from second class citizenship from which they had suffered for too long.

Next, the panelists. Also not typical. We spoke only twice by phone, but under the guiding hand and vision of AAUW program director, Kate Farrar, we ate dinner together the previous evening and by morning had coalesced into quite an impressive group, I must say. Who would have thought that a lawyer, a doctor, a business woman, and a political science professor cum author could bring together the multiple themes that emerge from this topic and weave them together so fluently?

Then, the venue. Again, not typical. Imagine four large hotel banquet halls as one, two massive movie screens, two podiums miked on stage, 6 floor mikes for questions, and more than 1000 chairs, most all of them filled with women. The energy in that room was very powerful.

Finally, the content. And, yes, this was not typical, too. So much of importance was revealed that it is utterly impossible to adequately report it all. But let me try to share a few highlights.

Lorie Jackson, hailing from Missouri, moderated. Her obvious talents as speaker and human resources professional put everyone at ease. She informed us that gender discrimination in the workplace is still alive and well. It comes in a variety of new flavors and intersects with racial and socioeconomic differences that make it even harder to ferret out.

Our lawyer, Irma Herrera, has dedicated herself to public interest advocacy and is presently the executive director of Equal Rights Advocates. Petite though she is, her presence filled the room. Her commitment and excitement were palpable as she recounted the obstacles overcome by the 6 teams of lawyers working on the Walmart gender discrimination lawsuit, the largest class action lawsuit in history with almost 2 million plaintiffs. Her group was front and center, and very involved.

She challenged the notion of an “opt-out revolution” (with Ruth stating that less than 1% of women wanted to or could take that path). Irma reframed their struggles and described them as “pushed out” by an inflexible work environment modeled on the male-female societal roles negotiated 60 years ago. The need for a major paradigm shift is sought in “who is the ideal worker and how is ideal work really performed?”, a subject treated in Joan Williams’ book: Unbending Gender — Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It.

Going from the macro to the micro, the litigant’s very personal was presented by me, a surgeon who had navigated the legal labyrinth claiming gender based discrimination and equal pay act violations against the University at Buffalo and Kaleida Health. My themes were that even with education, training, rising through the ranks, an almost impossible job in a surgical field, I faced what I claimed were overt acts of discrimination. I recounted my story but lingered over my realization that gender discrimination in the healthcare industry is not limited to women physicians, but also affects women as patients and as caregivers. The far reaching consequences are beyond the issues of social justice and have a real impact on the public health. Wasted human resources translate into economic waste we can’t afford. Gender discrimination in healthcare is everyone’s problem.

Ruth O’Brien, an academic and author has studied the social justice issues in American politics and law. Her focus on women and gender discrimination is brilliantly set forth in her latest book, Telling Stories out of Court: Narratives about Women and Workplace Discrimination. Using a new approach, fictional stories that bring out the emotional aspects of the rather dry and often difficult to comprehend legal precepts, she was both innovative and inspiring. The limitations of expected gender roles, salary equity, overt acts of discrimination and retaliation, and sexual harassment are recounted as an emotionally gripping part of the fabric that shrouds the ugly truth about gender discrimination in the workplace today. She autographed my copy of her book, bought months before I knew we would meet! On a personal note, she committed to join the AAUW from the podium, something her mother wanted her to do since the day she graduated from college.

The audience was generous in the praise and insightful in their questions. It was difficult to end and the after-panel hallway talk went on for quite a while. Many women came to me with their stories of gender discrimination in healthcare — as physicians, nurses, patients, and caregivers. I asked them to share, gave them my card and words of encouragement. I was truly humbled by their response, as were the other panelists.

This topic would have held interest for many hours more. But the final business meeting was ready to move the agenda to another facet of this incredibly focused and dedicated group of women who make up the AAUW. God bless!

This post was written by Dr. Linda Brodsky, Pediatric Otolaryngologist and advocate for gender and pay equity.  Dr. Brodsky also blogs at The Brodsky Blog.

Posted in 2009 AAUW Convention, Women and Work | 1 Comment »

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