Cooking dinner? $14 per hour
Cleaning the house? $10 per hour
Healing a scraped knee? $29 per hour
Being a stay-at-home mom? $117,000 per year (or $68,000 for working moms)

That’s the monetary compensation calculated by Salary.com, a provider of on-demand compensation software and data, in its annual Mom Salary Survey for the time spent performing the top 10 “Mom job functions,” including housekeeper, cook, janitor, chauffeur, and teacher. The primary driver of these figures is overtime, with stay-at-home and working moms putting in upwards of 90 overtime hours each week.

Not sure what you’re worth? Visit the Mom Salary Wizard to calculate the value of your work. You can even print out a personalized paycheck and pay stub. And not surprisingly, the wizard even illustrates the disparity in wages between men and women for the same jobs at home. For instance, the “salary” for a man in Virgnia to cook is $14.19 per hour, while that for a woman is $13.87 per hour.

So before you go out shopping for that perfect gift this Mother’s Day, consider writing mom a check, too. While she can’t cash it, the value will be priceless.

As an AAUW member and alumna of Washington University in St. Louis, I was outraged to learn that the university is awarding Phyllis Schlafly an honorary degree at graduation. Schlafly has campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment, gender bias laws, and Title IX. She is not just controversial; she is clearly anti-woman. For example, according to an article in The Sun Journal (Lewiston, ME), Schlafly believes that a woman cannot be raped by her husband: “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape,” she said.

I agree with Mary Ann Dzuback, one of the professors I had at Washington University. In Inside Higher Ed, Dzuback points out that although the university regularly invites people with a range of views to lecture at the school, Schlafly was invited not to lecture but to be honored. “This tells the world that this administration thinks so highly of the honoree that they give her the highest degrees the university can give, the highest degree of respect. And that,” says Dzuback, “is deeply troubling.”

While the Board of Trustees unanimously decided to give Schlafly an honorary degree, it is somewhat comforting to know that university students are outraged and are taking action. A Facebook group called “No honorary doctorate for anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly” already has more than 2,200 members. Postings on the site include students’ letters to the chancellor expressing their disgust with the award, as well as pledges never to donate to the university and encouraging their parents not to donate either.

With the decision to honor Schlafly already made, there’s little to do now except to protest graduation. For me, the bigger question is, How did this happen and how do we stop it from happening again? First, we must educate people about what Schlafly and other likeminded people really believe. They adamantly disagree with what AAUW stands for — equity for women.

Mothers devote much of their lives to our well-being. If your mother is retired or nearing retirement, how much do you know about her financial security? Initiating a conversation on this topic may be difficult and can appear intrusive. But just as working women recognize the existence of the pay gap, women in retirement are facing a pension gap.

An AAUW Educational Foundation research report, Mom’s Retirement Security, found that nearly half of us don’t know our mother’s financial situation. Other statistics cited in this report indicate that, for most women ages 65 and older, Social Security provides slightly more than half their income.

In 2008, the maximum annual Social Security benefit (retirement at age 65 and 10 months) is $26,220; this benefit is based on earnings at the maximum taxable amount since age 21. Women typically earn less than that taxable amount because of the gender pay gap and also because they are more likely to work for nonprofits, work part time, or take time out of the workforce to care for children or other relatives. Other factors, including the replacement of defined retirement benefit plans with 401(k) saving plans and the potential impact of a divorce, contribute to an increasing pension gap risk.

Developing a full understanding of retirement income and expenses does appear to be a daunting process. Obtaining the advice of an independent financial adviser can provide a reliable analysis with viable alternatives. Failing that, the Social Security Administration provides two well-written documents: Women and Retirement Savings and Taking the Mystery Out of Retirement Planning.

So how adequate is your mom’s retirement income? If you’re not sure, Mother’s Day would be a good time to start the conversation.

When my grandmother became pregnant with my mother, her first child, she was fired from her job. My grandfather was still in college and they had no other income, so they scrimped and borrowed from relatives to get by. After my mother was born, my grandmother looked for a new job because she had been replaced at her old job. Less than two years later, she was fired again when she became pregnant again. Her experience occurred in the late 1950s, years before the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978, an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Before then, it was common practice to fire and replace pregnant women or not hire women who might become pregnant.

Now, 30 years later, pregnant women still face discrimination. Here are two recent news articles that caught my eye: (1) A study in the United Kingdom found that 76% of employers said they would not hire a woman if they knew she was going to become pregnant within six months of starting her employment. (2) The financial news and data firm Bloomberg LP is facing a lawsuit involving 58 women who say they faced pay cuts and demotions or were denied job growth opportunities because they had become pregnant.

Later this month, the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund will launch a new pregnancy discrimination section of its online Resource Library to provide legal background, facts, and statistics on this topic. Visit this section to learn more about the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and what to do if you’re being discriminated against.

Have you or someone you know ever faced discrimination due to pregnancy? If so, what happened? Do you think expectant or new fathers face a higher risk of job discrimination than in the past?

AAUW is concerned about sexual harassment issues on campus, and in February we posted a blog entry about an incident at Yale University where pledge members of the Zeta Psi fraternity held a sign that said “We Love Yale Sluts” outside the university’s Women’s Center. This stunt was part of a scavenger hunt required to gain membership in the fraternity. The Women’s Center and a student who felt intimated by the group and their sign demanded that the university address this incident, which they felt was representative of fraternity-driven, campus-wide misogyny.

This week, the Executive Committee of Yale College found the young men not guilty on a charge of intimidation and harassment. The Women’s Center and others are upset because neither the pledges nor the fraternity culture on campus are expected to be disciplined or changed. The silver lining is that the university administrators have agreed to some of the Women’s Center’s demands, including the evaluation of extant sexual harassment prevention policies.

While it may be hard to prove legally that harassment or intimidation occurred due to the circumstances, it makes me wonder why their use of “slut” outside a safe place for women, including survivors of sexual assault, did not prompt immediate disciplinary actions and an official condemnation of the actions by the university or fraternity.

I agree with the Yale Women’s Center board and think that had the pledges stood in front of a multicultural center and held up a sign with a racial slur, the outcry against them would be stronger, and they would probably face disciplinary actions. Instead, a sexist slur that reminds women that they historically have been the sexual property of men and that is often used to ruin a woman’s reputation does not warrant such action …

What’s your opinion on the incident and its outcome?