On January 29, 2009, President Obama signed his first bill into law, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Noting that women make just 78 cents for every dollar men earn and “women of color, even less,” the president said that the Ledbetter Act would establish that
 

There are no second-class citizens in our workplaces and that it’s not just unfair and illegal, it’s bad for business to pay somebody less because of their gender or their age or their race or their ethnicity, religion, or disability.

 
Those are nice words, but can Obama back them up? As president, he is chief executive of the executive branch and directly responsible for the employees of the West Wing. He can talk the talk, but does the president walk the walk? How well is President Obama doing with promoting gender and pay equity in the White House?

President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden lead applause for Lilly Ledbetter at the signing of the Fair Pay Act in January.

Pretty well, it turns out. Last week, the White House released its Annual Report To Congress On White House Office Staff, a fascinating list of the 487 employees who work in the West Wing. Being the nerd that I am, I downloaded the CSV file and imported it into an Access database so that I could play with the data.

The resulting table included the employee’s name, status, salary, pay basis, and title. I went through the table and, to the best of my ability, added an “M” or “F” to denote the employee’s gender wherever possible. (I excluded 34 names from the data set as I could not determine their gender based on their first name alone or by doing a very quick Google search. I erred on the side of caution.)

Of the remaining employees, there were 229 men and 224 women. The men’s mean average salary was $84,728.37, while the women’s mean average salary was $78,816.99. This means that in the Obama White House women make $0.93 for every $1 men make, much higher than the national average. Not perfect, but progress, nonetheless.

The nerd in me toiled on, determined to see what else I could mine out of that data. After playing around with tables, queries, and reports in Access, I came up with some nifty factoids. For instance, women are 53 percent (57 out of 107 workers) of those making $45,000 or less but only 39 percent (11 of 28 workers) who make $172,000 or more. Salaries for both genders varied in the middle but tended to balance each other out.

Beyond the basics, you could spend hours (and probably days) running queries and examining the results. In a surprising example, 10 people have the job title “Counsel,” including two men, seven women, and one person of undetermined gender. The men have an average salary of $65,000.00 per year while the women have an average salary of $136,028.57 per year. (I had to redo the numbers twice; the women really do make more than twice what the men do!)

Overall, it appears the Obama administration is doing a pretty job of working toward gender and pay equity. Still, there is always more work to do, even at the White House.

Learn more about AAUW’s position on pay equity and be sure to check out the database for yourself. You also can take action now to urge your senators to co-sponsor the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182) so we can close the pay gap even further.

Source tables:

• Salaries for female White House staff
• Salaries for male White House staff
• Salaries for White House staff with ambiguous gender 

Guest Blogger Danine Spencer has a bachelor’s degree from Minnesota State University, Mankato, and is a freelance writer, focusing on politics, women’s rights, and health care.

The headline on a Kansas City Star column put it best: “Lilly Ledbetter’s name is on a law and a Supreme Court decision, and she’s not done yet.”

So true. These days, Ledbetter spends a lot of time on the road. She could take a well-deserved break and relax, but she continues to speak out so that tomorrow’s working women will be treated fairly.

On July 25, she’ll be in Minneapolis to give the summer commencement address for Walden University, but for a few days in June she was all ours. Those who attended AAUW’s successful convention in St. Louis, know about which I speak.

Ledbetter agreed to attend and serve as a headline convention speaker. Then she graciously expanded her role by taking time to sign hundreds of autographs. She put her signature on “I am the Face of Pay Equity” posters, on AAUW Outlook magazines (she was our cover girl for the Spring/Summer 2009 issue), and on page A15 of the June 25 issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which ran a column titled “Equal Pay is not only about fairness — it’s about survival.”

Authored by Ledbetter, AAUW Executive Director Linda D. Hallman, and Marsha Koch, president of AAUW of Missouri, the op-ed called on Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Kit Bond (R-MO) to co-sponsor the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would help to create a climate in which pay discrimination is not tolerated.

Having Ledbetter for the entire convention gave us all a lift.

My colleague Christy Jones, AAUW’s director of membership, said, ‘She is the Lilly Ledbetter that you read about. I love it that she came in and had a box lunch with us. I love that she said, ‘How can I help your members get the word out?’ She knows our members can and will make a difference in getting the Paycheck Fairness Act passed.”

After waiting in line to meet Ledbetter, Barbara Burgo, a delegate from the AAUW Taunton Area (MA) Branch, said to Lilly, “You are wonderful. I thank you.”

Later, Burgo continued her praises. “The gap will close because of her. We all have a part, but she’s the icon,” Burgo said.

Despite taking place in the weeks following the 37th anniversary of Title IX, Serena Williams’ 11th Grand Slam victory at Wimbledon this past Saturday over her sister Venus was overshadowed by the men’s final, which saw Roger Federer go 30 games into the fifth set to earn his record-breaking 15th major. This is a shame considering the enormous impact Serena and Venus have had on women’s tennis and women’s athletics (See the television ratings of the most recent women’s final without a Williams sister as one example. Another is the impressive work Venus did to equalize the payouts at majors between men and women tennis players.), and the challenges they have overcome to achieve their extraordinary success on the court.

Saturday’s women’s final marked the eighth time in the past decade that a Williams sister has won Wimbledon and was the third time that the two have faced each other in Wimbledon’s finals. Serena thwarted her older sister’s goal of being the first female tennis player to win Wimbledon three years in a row since Steffi Graf (1991–93), and she now has 11 grand slam titles, one behind women’s tennis legend Billy Jean King.

Even more impressive is keeping these historic achievements in perspective. The Williams sisters grew up in Compton, California, and began their tennis careers by honing their game where “a lot of dope is sold. We play on two courts — that’s all there is — and they look like trash, they’re so slippery,” according to their father and longtime coach, Richard Williams.

But even after their well-documented entrance into professional tennis, escaping their childhood roots in Compton proved challenging. Yetunde Price, the half-sister of Venus and Serena and their personal assistant, was tragically shot and killed while driving through the notorious neighborhood in the fall of 2003.

The Williams sisters, like many professional tennis players, opted to be privately trained at a sporting institute during their latter childhood years instead of attending public middle and high schools. Still, their ability to overcome these difficulties and achieve monumental gains in women’s tennis remind us of the power of athletics as a path out of a disadvantaged background and the importance of offering equitable athletic opportunities to all. Unfortunately, despite the recent 37th anniversary of Title IX, many high schools still do not offer equal athletic opportunities to women, a problem that is especially acute in low-income and minority schools. Venus and Serena provide yet another example as to why addressing this problem is so necessary.

Written by Tom Rosen, 2009 AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund/Leadership Programs summer fellow.

1988–89 Career Development Grant recipient Kathleen Wood Laurila started breaking through barriers at a young age. In 10th grade she broke the gender barrier by taking the boys’ shop drafting classes to prepare herself to work as a facility planner/designer. Later on in college, not finding the right major to suit her, Kathleen designed her own course of study to fit her vision.

Working as a commercial space planner and interior designer, Kathleen decided in 1988 she wanted to pursue a new interest: mass communications. Already a lifetime AAUW member, Kathleen applied for and received an AAUW Career Development Grant. “[It] provided me with much-needed funds to support my pursuit of an M.A. in mass communications,” said Kathleen.

Beyond the grant, AAUW continues to play a large role in Kathleen’s life. “It was in AAUW that I found intellectual challenge that would undergird the knowledge I needed to be an effective advocate,” Kathleen said. She further expounded on the large role AAUW played in shaping her life, saying, “As the AAUW topics and issues evolved, so did my own interest and pursuit of additional avenues for possibly making a difference — women’s worth, networking, reproductive rights, education equity, etc.”

Kathleen’s nontraditional career path led her to work as an independent contractor, which she says fit into her ideas of balancing home and family life, being actively involved in community work, and maintaining a professional career. Most recently Kathleen worked as the executive director of a foreign policy think tank, where she used her organizational and communication technology skills to manage a far-flung staff of writers. Kathleen has also stayed actively involved in community work dedicating her time to global causes such as human rights, gender mainstreaming and the environment.

Looking over her life, Kathleen says she is most proud of finding opportunities to expand on her multicultural experiences. Highlights include leading an 85-person group to Australia for a Friendship Force exchange, being appointed as the non-clergy representative for the U.S./Soviet Chautaugua commission in Moscow and Leningrad, and chairing the Iowa Governor’s International Task Force.

According to Kathleen, one of the most important lessons to learn is that “the measurement of success is a balanced approach to life.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This past winter, for 2007–08 Career Development grantee and sculptor Hanna Stevenson, a typical day began at 5:15 a.m. with a breakfast of ice cream and coffee. To protect her body from the cold Alaskan weather and high winds during her work as an apprentice pipefitter, she wore at least four layers of clothes. She filled her pockets with tools of the trade, including channel locks, wrenches, and a small level. The work bus left at 6:40 a.m., heading for the site where the 10–12 crew members were briefed for the day. A typical day, which was spent entirely outside in below freezing weather, was broken up by lunch, two 15-minute breaks, and an occasional drive to the nearest bathroom.

As one of only two women on the team, Hanna found herself taking on some traditional female roles. “I bring four to five bags of food to share every day, I make the coffee, and I clean up the tiny kitchen area in the back of the bus. If I don’t, no one will.” This experience has pushed Hanna to explore the tensions between the genders through art. “My work on the North Slope in the male-dominated oil fields has been a huge learning experience for me.”

Hanna worked in Alaska in 2005–06 as an artist and an apprentice blacksmith before deciding to go back to school to pursue a master of fine arts degree from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. After graduation, Hanna took the apprentice pipefitter position to enhance her work as an artist by exploring new ways to work with metals. Hanna’s MFA art show focused on sculptural objects of bronze, aluminum, and fiberglass under the theme of transformation. This title seems fitting, as it was Hanna’s goal to move to Alaska on her own to pursue an MFA to “get the most out of life as an artist.” The AAUW Career Development Grant helped Hanna in the last year of her master’s program, allowing her to expand her body of work and to use new materials that would have otherwise been too costly.

According to Hanna, her best artwork to date is “Vehicle of Transformation,” a 7-foot-long rideable “larvae” complete with an old-fashioned tractor seat and rubber-coated cast iron wheels. “I wanted to create an object that was interactive and kinetic. This piece embodies a sense of childhood adventure and limitless joy.”

As Hanna continues on her own journey of transformation, she plans to help other girls do the same. “I hope to combine my art background with my position in the trades to encourage young women in Alaska to better themselves and their place in society through education and the skilled trades … or both!”

AAUW’s 2009 National Convention opening session started out on a high note with a video welcome message from White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett. Jarrett extended a special greeting from President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama and applauded AAUW’s commitment to gender equity, work-life balance, and education.

After a brief introduction from AAUW Public Policy Director Lisa Maatz, keynote speaker Lilly Ledbetter took the stage and received a standing ovation. Ledbetter exclaimed, “Wow, posters with my name on it!”

Ledbetter said she was a simple Alabama girl, whose plan for life consisted of working hard, raising a family, and playing by the rules. “I held up my end of the bargain, but my employer, Goodyear, did not play by the rules,” she said. Ledbetter began her career in 1979 at Goodyear. After 19 years, she was given anonymous information that she was paid less than her male co-workers for virtually her entire career. She filed suit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and her case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In January 2009, Lilly Ledbetter was vindicated when she stood in the East Room of the White House as President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. However, our work is not over; AAUW is still leading the charge on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which has passed in the House but not in the Senate.

Ledbetter said, “I tell my story to try to make it better for women and girls. I recently spoke to 130 fourth graders. During my presentation, a little girl raised her hand and asked me ‘How did you feel when you found out the men were paid more?’ Now, if fourth graders get it, what is going on with the Senate? The true test of a person is not what happens to them, but how we address the issue. Each of us each day breaks through barriers.”

The session ended with a call to action from Maatz. She urged all members to engage in an act of “polite civil disobedience.” Attendees were charged to flood their senators’ e-mail and voice mail until all senators sign on to this landmark bill. AAUW gave every attendee the e-mail and phone numbers of the senators who have not yet signed on to the Paycheck Fairness Act.

This is not a threat; it is a promise. Senators, beware!

I was asked to provide “reporter on the spot” tweets of Lilly Ledbetter and Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s (D-CT) speeches during the 2009 AAUW National Convention. I thought it might be fun here to repeat the tweets (messages) of these two great ladies, abbreviated words and all. If you are not on Twitter yet, get on it — there’s a whole lot of history being recorded by this new communication tool. (If you are on Twitter, use #AAUW09 to follow all tweets.)

Here are my actual, live tweets from Lilly Ledbetter’s speech. She hit the stage Friday afternoon, starting 1:30 p.m.

• Beginning of AAUW Convention — where Lilly Ledbetter will be speaking #AAUW09\
• The imp of the singular person — the one person who takes it for the team, in this case women! Intro to Ledbetter #AAUW09
• Ledbetter tells us her story — after being at White House to sign bill, in restaurant, waitress asks why r u in Wall Street Journal. #AAUW0C
• Waitress and other hotel staff paid her bills bec of what her acts meant to them. They felt honored to do so. #AAUW09
• Lilly Ledbetter — “When I am with AAUW, I am with family.” #AAUW09
• Ledbetter — As much as I’m glad I’m here at #AAUW09, I wish I wasn’t bec I never wanted to be the subject of inequity. (Paraphrased)
• Ledbetter tells of her story, told “If u discuss your pay [with other employees] you’ll not work here.” She sued Goodyear for pay discrimination in 1998. #AAUA09
• Began long path of appeals — all way to Supreme Court. #AAUA09
• Supreme Court gave poor ruling (read about it) but Lilly wouldn’t stop. 18 months to get new bill in Congress. #AAUW09
• When talking to 4th graders—a girl asked how did it feel to get pd less then the men? If a 4th grader gets it, why doesn’t corp Am? #aauw09
• AAUW never let up — thru your efforts, this bill got passed and signed. Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. WH had AAUW in front row. #aauw09
• But while Ledbetter is thrilled at the bill, “our work is not done, I told Obama that day.” Must still pass Paycheck Fairness Act. #aauw09
• True test of a person — not what happens to u but how we react. Injustice needs action. #aauw09

Rosa DeLauro’s speech:

• The tweeting continued Saturday morning…
• Inspired by listening to Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-CT) #aauw09
• “I’m humbled to be here today,” DeLauro tells attendees @ #aauw09 As pioneers, we stand on your shoulders so that we may do the right thing.
• DeLauro tells #aauw09 “No one does it better than AAUW.”
• DeLauro “Lilly Ledbetter is one of my heroines — she raised issue of pay equity to a national discourse.” #aauw09
• “I was like a bad toothache” DeLauro talking @ her tenacity with other Reps when getting co-sponsors for Paycheck Fairness Act #aauw09
• “AAUW is so effective since you have a presence in every state — that is critical.” DeLauro tells #aauw09
• “We meet today at pivotal point w/ econ environ, new pres, new emboldened Congress — believe in trusting but believe in verifying.” RDL #aauw09
• “This #aauw09 conf is @ breaking barriers as a community and as a catalyst to make things happen in Wash DC.” DeLauro tells approx 1,000 mbrs
• DeLauro 1st introduced Paycheck Fairness Act 12 yrs ago — 1st hearing of this just last year. #aauw09
• “I think of Title IX, AAUW and Patsy Mink — on behalf of not just women in sports but 4 all Americans in higher educ.” RDL #aauw09
• Also Healthy Families Act needs action. Hv 110 co-sponsors on Hill, need 218. So contact your Rep now. DeLauro #aauw09
• “Do not underestimate the power of big ideas. As I look around #aauw09, I feel we can do it.” DeLauro

Ledbetter, women politicians headline AAUW convention
St. Louis is the host city for the AAUW national convention, which is featuring Lilly Ledbetter, the nationally-known pay equity advocate. Additionally, the convention’s opening session will feature the local St. Louis Comptroller, Darlene Green.

900 AAUW members attend St. Louis convention
 Over 900 AAUW members are meeting this weekend for the organization’s national convention. Featured speakers include Lilly Ledbetter, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA). Marsha Koch currently serves as the AAUW state president for Missouri, the host state for this St. Louis convention.

Jackie Speier Speaking at AAUW National Convention This Weekend
Nearly a thousand women are meeting in St. Louis this weekend for the AAUW national convention. Rep. Jackie Speier from California is one of the featured speakers, as well as Lilly Ledbetter and Rep. Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut.

Equal Pay is not only about fairness – it’s about survival
The current state of the economy has led some women to become the breadwinners in their households. When subjected to wage discrimination, the loss in income affects more than women, it affects the families they support, too.

Money for Grad School
When the economy isn’t doing well, many people go back to school. While grad school can be an expensive way to boost your career, there are tips to shopping around at different schools and finding funding through scholarships and even fellowships from AAUW.

Paycheck Fairness
President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law in January 2009, but it did not include the paycheck fairness bill. This bill would combat gender discrimination in pay by requiring employers to prove differences in wages are based on the jobs themselves rather than gender. Obama supported the bill when he was a Senator, and his support could help move it along now.

Do you want to learn how to implement great salary negotiation programs on your campus? If you’re attending the AAUW convention, check out the “Salary Negotiation Skills for Women” workshop. If you cannot attend the workshop, you still can follow the links below to learn more about the different resources available to you.

As Lisa Maatz, AAUW director of public policy and government relations will discuss during the workshop, in the 2007 research report Behind the Pay Gap, AAUW found that just one year out of college, women working full time earn less than their male colleagues earn, even when they work in the same field. Learning to negotiate salary and benefits can help close that gap, especially for young women who are just starting their careers.

The 2007–08 AAUW Campus Action Project (CAP) team from Clarkson University used their grant money to empower women students to learn and use evidence-based negotiation strategies and techniques in professional and work situations and to provide a safe space for women to learn to participate actively in negotiations. During the convention workshop, Mary Graham from Clarkson will talk about this project and how the CAP team identified a group of 10–15 women student leaders who researched, developed, and delivered salary negotiation training to their peers on campus. The project culminated with a negotiations contest in which students who participated in the training sessions were able to use their new skills to compete for prizes. CAP team student members Ashley and Lisa, the winners of the competition, each wrote guest blog posts last year about their experiences.

AAUW and the WAGE Project recently formed a partnership to focus their efforts on ensuring that, before graduation, women have knowledge about negotiating equitable pay. Annie Houle, national director of campus and community initiatives for the WAGE Project, will explain to workshop attendees how AAUW members can bring the $tart $mart Campus Negotiation Workshop to their local campus. If you are interested in becoming involved with $tart $mart, please fill out this form.

Related Salary Negotiation Resources

Recently, through a Legal Advocacy Fund Campus Outreach grant, the AAUW Gresham Area (OR) Branch presented Women Taking the Lead in Salary Negotiation at Mt. Hood Community College. If you are an AAUW member with a campus salary negotiation workshop or program in mind, but you need funding, you can apply for up to $750 from LAF to fund it.

Last year, AAUW formed a partnership with Job Search Intelligence, and you can use their free fair pay compensation tool to help you determine your personalized target salary goal. This information can help you make informed career choices and give you tools to engage in intelligent salary negotiation with a future employer, particularly if you are a woman and/or a person of color.

On a side, but related, note, a few weeks ago a friend recommended I read Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. I did and now I highly recommend it to you!

Never heard of Arlene Harris? You might not know her name, but millions of cell phone users globally have certainly benefitted from her more than 35 years of innovation in wireless technology. Arlene Harris is co-founder and chair of the board of GreatCall, makers of the Jitterbug mobile phone, and the first woman inducted into the RCR Wireless Hall of Fame.

Arlene Harris, Co-founder and chair of the board of GreatCall, makers of the Jitterbug mobile phone.

Arlene began her career at the age of 5, connecting telephone calls on a mobile telephone switchboard for ICS Communications (MetroCall), her family’s business in Los Angeles. Later, under her guidance, ICS developed the first wireless consumer healthcare application, LifePage, a program that provided pagers to organ transplant candidates. She also founded SOS Wireless Communications, a cellular service for making outgoing calls in emergencies. Arlene was already innovating in the use of wireless technology to assist people in need.

She started and built several other companies over the years, including Subscriber Computing, and pioneered early cellular industry standards such as the method for roaming services and systems that led to the first prepaid cellular services. Arlene holds several issued wireless communications-related patents and has several filings pending.

Innovation is all in the family for Arlene. Her husband and business partner, Marty Cooper, is credited with developing and using the very first wireless cell phone for Motorola in 1973. Together they redesigned SOS Wireless into GreatCall, the parent company of Jitterbug, an easy-to-use, personalized cell phone targeted to anyone who is tired of complicated cell phones. Jitterbug, a new AAUW member affinity partner benefit, focuses on user-friendly features such as bigger buttons for easy dialing, a large screen with oversized numbers, a power speaker, and 24-hour customer service.

Personally, I am thrilled to learn about Jitterbug. For years my sisters and I have attempted get my septuagenarian parents to get a cell phone in case of emergency. They proudly admit that they can barely turn on a computer, and the concept of a cell phone is foreign to them. Jitterbug offers a store of voice-based services rather than text-based applications including a medication reminder service and other health and wellness services. Options like these would provide us greater peace of mind and increased access to resources for my parents.

Arlene Harris has succeeded for more than three decades as an award-winning entrepreneur. She will bring her innovative spirit and business expertise to the SHE-E-O Forum this Saturday afternoon at the 2009 AAUW National Convention.

When we celebrated Ada Lovelace Day back in March, I read about the achievements of some of the most outstanding ladies in technology. While I don’t recall seeing anything about Arlene then, she is obviously a modern role model for women in technology and STEM. I will certainly look forward to celebrating all of her achievements next year.

After reading a recent post on the Women in Media & News blog by guest blogger Nia Vardalos on how studio executives do not consider female leads to be profitable characters, I couldn’t help ask whether this is only the case for summer movies or for movies in general. You may remember Nia from an independent movie about Greek culture, life, and living called My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Nia is back with another Greek-themed romantic comedy this year titled My Life in Ruins, which might be one of the only summer movies with a female lead, not counting animated movies. Let’s face it, when the studio executives pick up scripts for summer releases, they look for the big-budget, explosion-filled, blockbuster hits. This includes G.I. Joe, Transformers, Harry Potter, Star Trek, and many more. All of these movies do, however, have female supporting cast members. Then there are a handful of laugh-out-loud comedies, which also fit into the male-dominated cast category, like Bruno, Year One, Funny People, and more.

Then I decided to look at this from another perspective. I must note that I actually think about this a lot. It seems to me that the less and less females are appearing in summer blockbusters, the more and more they seem to be showing up on summer television shows. There is In Plain Sight, a USA show about the life of a female U.S. Marshall in New Mexico; HBO’s True Blood, whose main character, Sookie, played by Anna Paquin can hear people’s thoughts and is in love with a vampire named Bill; My Boys, the TBS comedy about the life and friends of a female Chicago sports columnist; Showtime’s Nurse Jackie, staring Sopranos great Edie Falco; Weeds, about a suburban mom who sells “you know what” for a living; TNT’s dramas The Closer and Saving Grace, along with TNT’s new nursing drama, Hawthrone, staring Jada Pinkett Smith.

Sounds like a lot huh? That’s my point! While most people have been paying attention to how the summer blockbusters have become overwhelmingly known for their male-dominated roles, I can’t help but notice that networks, be it cable or not, are figuring out that female leads are viable routes for successful summer programming on TV.

The real question that we should be asking in regard to decisions these Hollywood executives make is where are all of the female action heroes? In order to determine how marketable female leads are, shouldn’t we give them the same big blockbuster movie roles that men are given? Even if we look at other genres like the various comic book remakes or action thrillers, we hardly see any female leads during the summertime. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a Judd Apatow movie with the main character played by a female? And I mean the main character, not the main character’s female love interest. So, Hollywood, I challenge you to venture outside the realm of romantic comedies to cast your female leads, because in my opinion this has the potential to draw large audiences for its originality and sheer genius!

In 1997, I moved to St. Louis — a city I loved and called home for more than 10 years. In that time, I found a few favorite locations that I want to share with those lucky enough to be in St. Louis for the 2009 AAUW National Convention. I am sure you have read about going to the Arch, Forest Park and museums, and the Budweiser Tour (my college roommates and I went a few times a week one summer  — both the tour and the samples were free!). I’d like to go beyond that list, though, so here are a few of my favorite places that I miss and make a point of visiting when I’m in the Lou.

Ted Drewes

Ted Drewes, a local frozen custard place, is known for its “concretes” — blended frozen treats so fresh you can turn them upside down and the frozen custard will not come out. The Chippewa Avenue location is known as the stop to make after Cardinals baseball games. The lines always look long, but they move very quickly. I recommend the Sin Sunday (tart cherries and hot fudge) concrete.

Schlafly Tap Room and Bottle Works

St. Louis is famous for its long-standing brewery culture. While Budweiser is known worldwide, Schlafly is a favorite with locals. The beer is available at many local establishments, and Schlafly’s two restaurant locations are some of my favorites in St. Louis. Bottle Works, located just outside the St. Louis city limits, uses local vendors for most of their food. They even have an on-site garden. The Tap Room, located downtown, has a delicious menu. Whichever location you choose, be sure to order the sticky toffee pudding for dessert!

Third Degree Glass Factory

Third Degree, a public-access glass art education center, offers classes and glass-blowing demonstrations. During the summer season, the artists work limited hours because of the heat (the molten glass is about 2,000 degrees), but the gallery of local art is worth the trip. Make sure you visit the bathroom to see some of the coolest faucets and sinks!

City Museum

This is not a museum in the traditional sense; it’s a playground for adults! It combines architectural treasures and recycled materials to make a place like you have never seen before. An outdoor area features slides, there are indoor caves and an aquarium, and, after much anticipation, the rooftop is now open to guests.

The Hill

The Hill is a traditional St. Louis neighborhood that was settled by Italian immigrants. It’s known as the place to find the best Italian American cuisine, including a St. Louis original — toasted ravioli. If you are looking for a good meal, be sure to make a trip to The Hill. You might also want to try St. Louis-style pizza, which has a super thin, crispy crust topped with provel cheese.

Sunday was Father’s Day, and it’s in that spirit that I’m going to talk a little bit about President Obama’s fatherhood initiative and how it relates to AAUW’s promotion of work/life balance legislation. But before we get into that, let me just tell you that I’ve got one heck of a dad, so here’s a father-son story for you.

Dad and I share a hockey team and a hero: the New York Rangers and Mark Messier. The Rangers have won exactly one championship over the past 70 years, in 1994, and Messier is the guy won it for us. We swear by this man. We call him the Captain or, when we’re feeling particularly reverential, the Messiah.

A few years ago, the Rangers bestowed upon Mark the ultimate honor: they retired his jersey number. It was one of the most memorable nights in Rangers history. A 90-minute love fest filled with standing ovations, video tributes, and speeches galore. To top it all off, the Rangers won that night in a thrilling overtime game. Truly the ultimate night for any Rangers fan to be in the building, especially for someone like Dad, who’s been a Rangers fan for nearly 50 years. He had his eye on Mark Messier Night for a long, long time. And wouldn’t you know it, the hockey gods smiled on him, because Dad got a ticket for the game. And as soon as he got it, he knew exactly what he would do with it.

He gave it to me.

I thought about that night as I was watching President Obama promote his fatherhood initiative at a White House event on Friday afternoon. During the town hall, the president talked about his own experiences growing up without a father present in his life, trying to be a good dad to Sasha and Malia while on the campaign trail and in office, and how all the men in the room could be better role models for their own children.

During the event, President Obama kept returning to the same theme: It’s the little things that make the biggest difference. A good talk. Playing catch. A pat on the back and an encouraging smile. An “I love you” right at just the right moment. As the president said,”Even if it’s just for a couple hours a week of shooting hoops, or helping with homework, or just talking about what’s going on in that young person’s life. Even the smallest moments can end up having an enormous impact, a lasting impact on a child’s life.”

The statistics bear out the president’s message. According to the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse,”children with involved, loving fathers are significantly more likely to do well in school, have healthy self-esteem, exhibit empathy and pro-social behavior, and avoid high-risk behaviors such as drug use, truancy, and criminal activity compared to children who have uninvolved fathers.” Moreover, various studies on child well-being have shown that paternal love is an important factor in predicting the social and emotional development of children and young adults. Bottom line: Good, loving, attentive dads are a huge positive factor in a child’s life.

It takes a lot of personal responsibility to be a good dad, and that effort should always be put forth at a high level. But in the same way that a little time in a child’s life makes a big difference, a little help from the workplace goes a long way toward balancing the need to be on the clock with the need to spend time at home. AAUW believes that creating work environments that help employees balance the responsibilities of work and family is good public policy. Unfortunately, our family oriented workplace policies lag dramatically and embarrassingly behind those in much of the rest of the world, including all high-income countries and many middle- and low-income countries as well.

AAUW fights hard to ensure that parents don’t have to give up a day’s pay to spend time caring for their families. Bills such as the Healthy Families Act and the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act would make major strides toward improving workplaces for employees with family responsibilities of all kinds. This is particularly true for working women, who today make up a larger share of the American workforce than at any time in our nation’s history. And, in this case, what’s good for moms is also really good for dads.

It’s hard for me to put into words what it meant to experience Mark Messier night in person. What I can tell you is that my dad was responsible for making it happen. It was the sort of thing that fathers do for their sons. And letting them know how much things like this are appreciated and remembered, well, that’s the sort of thing sons do for their fathers.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Today marks the 37th anniversary of the passage of Title IX, the federal legislation that prevents all federally funded schools from discriminating based on sex in education and school activities. While those who worked so hard to pass the legislation nearly 40 years ago may have been focusing on scholarships and science classes for girls, the provision is now best known for its strides in closing the gender gap in secondary and collegiate athletics. The National Women’s Law Center reports that in 1972, fewer than 32,000 women participated in intercollegiate athletics and received only 2 percent of school athletic budgets. In 2002, 30 years later, we received 42 percent of the opportunities and 32 percent of the recruitment funds. Huge advances have been made, but the long road ahead still remains.

AAUW held a briefing at the Capitol last Tuesday for the High School Sports Information Collection Act, a piece of legislation that would require school administrators to make public their statistics on race and sex stratification in athletics programs. Attending the briefing were former Sen. Birch Bayh (D-IN), who introduced and successfully passed the legislation in the 1970s, and Dominique Dawes, three-time Olympic medalist in gymnastics. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the briefing, and, while I went in knowing that the policy nerd inside of me would love the chance to snap a photo with the legendary Birch Bayh, I never expected to be so giddy to meet Dominique. As I stood in a long line of young female interns all waiting for the chance to shake hands with the young woman we’d been watching on TV since elementary school, the 10-year-old soccer player and Mia Hamm fanatic reemerged from within me, and I realized how lucky I’d been to have the support of my parents and schools in my dedicated but short-lived efforts to be the youngest player on the U.S. women’s national team.

I started playing soccer at the ripe old age of 5 when “rad” was the word de jour. I played midfield for the Radical Raspberries. I stuck with the sport through middle school, and, while my dreams of athletic stardom were quick to dissolve when other passions arose in high school, I’ll never forget the leadership experience and work ethic I gained over the years on the soccer field. Girls who play sports in middle and high school have lower dropout rates, avoid pregnancy, stay away from drugs, and get better grades. They also tend to avoid childhood obesity, unlike one in three of their peers. Learning the discipline and dedication associated with competition and team play is an invaluable opportunity that wouldn’t have been available to me without Title IX.

But I was one of the lucky ones. Girls in urban areas are significantly less likely to have athletic facilities and opportunities that match up to their male counterparts. Even in the suburbs, parents have to file a request under the Freedom of Information Act (a process that can take up to two years) just to take a look at the data that shows whether their daughters are being treated the same as their sons. I wouldn’t want to be the person to get stuck between a school administrator and an outraged father that just found out that while the boys down the street play in a brand new stadium, his daughters are stuck on a lowly old practice field.

So bake a cake, light some candles, and write your senators and representative and let them know that their co-sponsorship of the High School Athletics Accountability Act would be Title IX’s absolute favorite birthday present.

This post was written by AAUW Public Policy Fellow Meg Beyer, who is also a member of the 2008–09 AAUW Student Advisory Council.

Each week, AAUW holds a meeting to discuss upcoming blog topics for AAUW Dialog. In preparation for AAUW’s upcoming national convention, someone suggested writing about AAUW history, so I decided to test out one piece of AAUW history in particular.

Jackie Littleton, a member of the AAUW Board of Directors, found a cookbook complied by the AAUW-Grand Island (NE) Branch in 1951 at a Texas estate sale. AAUW has managed to recreate and republish the cookbook, and it will be sold through ShopAAUW at convention and online. This has to have been the most fun I have ever had researching material for a blog.

Everything in the cookbook was so fun. But some things are quite odd, like the number of date pudding recipes (three!), the pictures of dancing dates, or “fat” listed as an ingredient. The recipes looked really good, so I decided to try the sour cream spice cake. Because I think everything tastes better in cupcake form, I decided to make cupcakes instead.

I went with a penuche frosting recipe suggested by Cupcake Project, originally from Southern Food on About.com.

While I really like to cook, I am not that accomplished as a baker. But I was really pleased with the way that the cupcakes turned out. Taking on this vintage recipe was an adventure that I enjoyed.

The attendees of the blog meeting served as taste-testers for the cupcakes, which received good reviews. They were described as “sweet and salty” by one blog contributor.

If you get a chance to make anything from the cookbook, leave a comment and let everyone know how it turned out! And join us at the AAUW convention later this week as history is made.

Spice Cake Batter

Meeting Attendees enjoying cupcakes

Finished Cupcakes

To me the most striking finding from a recent work-family research report that’s getting a lot of online buzz was that the wage gap between mothers and non-mothers is even more pronounced than the wage gap between women and men. Even though I decided early on that I didn’t want to have kids, that doesn’t stop me from recognizing that there is something wrong with that picture. In all my 30 childless years, I have met many amazing, hardworking women who have successfully balanced careers and children. I have also, however, seen how hard it can be to do both. Growing up, I was a witness to my mother’s own fight to juggle children and a career. Unfortunately, the dismal findings from the study don’t make motherhood seem like an attractive option to this young career woman.

In order to collect data, researchers sent out fake resumes from mothers, non-mothers, fathers, and non-fathers with equal credentials to see who would get called back for interviews and who would get hired. Researchers found that mothers were consistently rated as less competent and less committed than non-mothers. If that’s not disturbing enough, mothers were offered an average of $11,000 less per year and were 100 percent less likely to be recommended over an equally qualified candidate without children.

To further incense hardworking mothers everywhere, Robert Franklin, writing for Men’s News Daily, explained the discrepancies found by researchers as employers choosing the more productive employee. “Employers are more likely to hire non-mothers because they know they’ll work more than mothers will. It doesn’t make sense for an employee to pay a lower-producing employee the same as a higher-producing one.”

Gloria Blackwell, director of the AAUW Fellowship and Grants Department and mother of three, asked, “Why must we continue to use motherhood to justify ongoing discrimination against women?”  She challenges those who are dubious about the productivity of mothers to imagine a world in which employers avoid hiring single or childless women on the basis that they will shirk work duties for singles’ vacations and endless happy hours. When put that way, it seems a little ridiculous, doesn’t it?

AAUW provides grants and fellowships to financially bolster both mothers and non-mothers pursuing higher education, so they will be able to dedicate themselves more fully to their studies. In a more general sense AAUW works for equity for all women, so they have a fair chance, regardless of their family situations. Although I might choose not to have kids, I want to be sure that that choice is based on a personal decision rather than an economic one.

Like many others, I was glued to #iranelection, #iran09, and, sadly, #neda over the weekend as I kept checking in with Twitter while working on AAUW convention projects. At one point I turned on CNN and saw Christiane Amanpour highlight the impact women are having in Iran, especially with the protests against injustice — what others are calling “The Lipstick Revolution.”  In case you weren’t aware, the regular news sources were turned out of Iran, so some citizens, many of whom are women, have taken to sharing firsthand accounts on Twitter or through videos on YouTube.

According to Amanpour, although women make up 65 percent of the university student body and voted more than men in the last several elections, they are still treated as second-class citizens when it comes to legal rights in divorces, child custody, and inheritance, among other things. As a result, “women have become primary agents of change in Iran,” Nayereh Tohidi, chair of the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at California State University, Northridge, told CNN.

And then, suddenly, a young woman, a bystander watching the protests with her father, was shot and killed. Her death may have gone unnoticed, as a footnote name in the list of those killed, except it was captured by a cell phone and put on YouTube. The video became an overnight symbol of the growing crisis. According to Robin Wright in Time magazine, “The woman rapidly became a symbol of Iran’s escalating crisis, from a political confrontation to far more ominous physical clashes. Some sites refer to her as ’Neda,’ Farsi for the voice or the call.”

And then this morning as I watched the continuing coverage, I heard a reporter speculate over the relative quiet yesterday. His opinion was that women and students may not give the protests the force they need to continue. Hmmm. I can’t speak to the political reasons behind any country’s turmoil. But I have watched how social media tools such as Twitter and YouTube have made a tremendous impact on global perceptions of events. I saw CNN get lambasted on #cnnfail and saw them change how they reported news almost overnight as a result. And I watched the faces of “those women,” saw their seriousness, their bravery, their loss of life. It reminded me why I advocate for justice and equality on behalf of women and girls, through the auspices of AAUW. How about you?

This Friday, June 26, begins AAUW’s biennial convention in St. Louis and marks my second time attending the event. As a Missouri native, I know that it can be scorching outside in St. Louis in the summer and fear the effects of the “humugity” on my hair. But I also know that the inside of the Renaissance Grand Hotel will be charged with energy as more than 900 members and delegates from across the country gather to connect with colleagues, exchange ideas, be inspired, celebrate achievements, and have their voices heard on critical AAUW issues. A lot will take place over three action-packed days, so be sure to stay up-to-date on all the latest.

• Visit AAUW Dialog for postings about conference happenings.
• Join discussions concerning organizational changes on Facebook here, here, and here.
• Share late-breaking details on Twitter (hash tag #aauw09).
• Follow all of the goings-on at AAUW.org and on the convention website.
• Connect with AAUW states and branches.

Soamarat Vilaiyuk, a 2005–06 International Fellow, was first inspired to pursue training in pediatric rheumatology by a child she met in her native Thailand. While working as a resident and fellow at Ramathibodi Hospital, she met a boy who had suffered from arthritis for many years. Soamarat explains, “Although he received many medications, the disease was still uncontrolled, and he couldn’t walk like a normal boy. He did not give up but kept fighting the disease without losing hope.”

Soamarat Vilaiyuk with one of her young patients

With the help of an AAUW fellowship, Soamarat studied at the University of Pittsburgh, where she worked on a medical team that cared for rheumatic patients, a valuable experience she is now applying to her work in Thailand. Soamarat says she had run out of funds to continue her studies, but after learning about the AAUW fellowships through a teacher who had also received a grant, she decided to apply: “After I got the grant from AAUW, I had hope again. I would like to thank AAUW a million times.”

One aspect of the International Fellowship that Soamarat finds uplifting is that, instead of promoting “brain drain,” it encourages fellows to return home to help their own communities. Soamarat seems to be a perfect example of why this strategy works. Currently, Soamarat is living in Bangkok and working at one of the top medical schools there. She believes she is the only pediatric rheumatologist in the country, but she has big goals for changing that: “My biggest challenge is to spread the knowledge of pediatric rheumatology to medical students, residents, fellows, and doctors all over the country, so they can help me with these kids.” She hopes to set up a clinic to serve patients with rheumatism and to conduct valuable research in the field of pediatric rheumatology.

For other International Fellows completing their studies or other women from abroad who are considering applying for an International Fellowship, Soamarat serves as evidence of the far-reaching impact of one individual returning home to better her community.