Pay Equity Issues and Women's Studies

The following discussion of claims that Women's Studies doesn't pay
attention to women's pay equity took place on WMST-L in April 2007.  For 
additional WMST-L files available on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

Dear Colleagues,

The following is an excerpt from a piece I received yesterday from WeNews
and titled, "Colleges Go Light on Women's Pay Inequity," by Hannah Seligson,
WeNews correspondent.  

What do faculty think about this?

Tonia 

Excerpt:

Overlooked by Women's Studies

Ann Mari May, a visiting professor of economics at Middlebury College in
Vermont, says pay equity is an important topic for young women. "It's
estimated that a woman will lose $420,000 over the first 20 years of her
career by not negotiating on her first salary."

May says campus interest in pay equity can be subdued because women's
studies departments often skirt the subject. "Women's studies departments
have lost touch with many day-to-day concerns for women, such as pay equity.
It's why feminist economics is still a somewhat marginalized topic."

Kassidy Johnson, a campus organizer for the Feminist Majority Foundation,
the Arlington, Va., group dedicated to women's social, political and
economic equality, is in touch with dozens of colleges in the South. She
agrees that campus programming for women focuses more heavily on sexual
assault, emergency contraception and global women's issues.
However, Johnson says interest in pay equity was apparent at the group's
recent national leadership meeting for younger women. "Young women want to
know how to ask for a raise and negotiate their salary," she says.


http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3141

Tonia St.Germain, J.D.
Coordinator, Assistant Professor
Gender Studies Program
Eastern Oregon University
One University Blvd., ACK 113
La Grande, OR 97850
tstgerma  AT  eou.edu

Our campus is holding a "Gender Equity Bake Sale" today as a vehicle for
community education.  It is a true bake sale, napkins, posters, etc. all
done in pink and powder blue.  The "blues" are charged higher prices (in
theory, but not actual practice) to reflect their higher wages.

We have a lot of fun with this every year while lighting a true fire under
many female students who are outraged by the info on the posters we hang
around the Campus Center.

Dr. Susan Birns
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
Dept. of Soc/Anthro/Social Work
Director, Susan B. Anthony Women's Center
sbirns  AT  mcla.mass.edu

Hello all,

I thought this was outrageously incorrect. Did the author of the piece
look at any intro to WMST syllabi, textbooks, etc.? I have never taught
women's studies without talking about the pay gap, and don't know anyone
who doesn't address it in their courses. Not to mention all the women &
work courses out there--surely, they must teach the pay gap as well.
Most women's centers I know hold events for Pay Equity Day as well. To
say this isn't being addressed on college campuses is just bad reporting
and not worthy of Women's Enews. IMHO.

Best,
Brenda

Brenda Bethman
Director, UMKC Women's Center
105 Haag Hall
University of Missouri-Kansas City
bethmanb  AT  umkc.edu

I teach psychology of women and another course on psychology of men and
in both courses I always mention the pay gap.  I just sent an article
out to my current class on psych of men about the gender pay game
starting right out of college, so I know that we're addressing on my
campus, from at least these classes.

If the mind can imagine it, the mind can make it so

Dr. Susan Clark-Cook
Clinician
Counseling and Student Development
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Natural and Applied Sciences

That doesn't sound right to me at all.  I'd agree with
Brenda - the textbooks I use and the ones I've
examined all address this issue, and it's a concept
that is regularly covered in Intro courses and others.

When I see phrases like, "Women's studies departments
have lost touch with many day-to-day concerns for
women," I always wonder if the person quoted really
has any significant experience with Women's Studies
departments.  Because my experience is that day-to-day
concerns inform a lot of what we do, both in our
teaching and in our research.

Jessica Nathanson

Dr. Jessica Nathanson
Visiting Assistant Professor
English and Gender Studies
Augustana College
janathanson  AT  yahoo.com
nathanson  AT  augie.edu

Whoever wrote this has not been around a women's studies program. Of course we
talk about this. And my students often ask in their interview with a woman over
the age of 50 about such matters. And I am going to sent the latest report to
my students!

Robin Powers, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Psychology Department
Coordinator of Women's Studies
Gannon University
Erie. PA 16543
powersr  AT  gannon.edu

I think the point wasn't that the pay gap is never mentioned, it was
that students are not shown how that gap will affect them personally,
and are not taught how to think about their careers/futures -- how to
negotiate a salary, how to not get sidelined at work etc. On another
list i'm on, of women in media, the young women all agreed that they
could have used a lot more guidance in college -- not just from
women's studies depts, but from journalism depts, and from the college
career centers. Basically, they left college believing that the world
of work was like school, ie you are rewarded on the basis of smarts
and diligence.  They had no idea that there was lots more to it than
that.  They wished there had been, for example, meetings for students
at which these issues were discussed, speakers, counsellors, even
mini-courses. They wished there were connections between campus
feminists and career centers. A course on how the wage gap is
constructed--its various causes and effects -- would be very
interesting for them. books like "women don't Ask" and Anna Fel's
'necessary Dreams."   Even just little things, like men's greater
willingness to talk about their salaries with each other, add up.
  In journalism I see again and again how  men and women just out of
college all seem to start off the same, but ten, or even five years
later, are in very different places. There's a lot of sexism, but also
the young men are  more strategic. I definitely think colleges could
do more to prepare young women to deal with the world of work.

Katha Pollitt
katha.pollitt  AT  gmail.com

Brenda is right as always.
For those of you who do not yet have a teaching tool on the wage gap I
recommend Joni Seager's Penguin Atlas of Women in the World. All of the
WMST textbooks on my shelf have chunks on pay issues.

Molly Dragiewicz
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Criminology, Justice, and Policy Studies
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Molly.Dragiewicz  AT  uoit.ca

Ah - Katha, this makes a lot of sense.  I definitely
think we could do more to prepare students for this
kind of thing.  But it does strike me that something
like "preparing students to fight the wage gap in
their own lives" sounds quite different than the
original quote!
Jessica Nathanson

--- Katha Pollitt <katha.pollitt  AT  GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> I think the point wasn't that the pay gap is never
> mentioned, it was
> that students are not shown how that gap will affect
> them personally,
> and are not taught how to think about their
> careers/futures -- how to
> negotiate a salary, how to not get sidelined at work
> etc.

Dr. Jessica Nathanson
Visiting Assistant Professor
English and Gender Studies
Augustana College
janathanson  AT  yahoo.com
nathanson  AT  augie.edu

I have a couple of responses to this. The first is that I think Katha is
partially incorrect--there *are* connections between campus feminists
and career centers, at least among women's centers. Many of my women's
centers colleagues do indeed partner with their career centers to offer
sessions on how to negotiate, how to communicate, etc. When I was at
Texas A&M, we ran a women's leadership organization out of the women's
center and often addressed such topics. One problem, however, is that
students don't always come to such sessions, as this quote from the
article makes clear:

"Jenni Daniels, 22, a coordinator for student programs at Tulane
University in New Orleans and a 2006 Tulane graduate, says the findings
are in sync with a lack of interest in the gender wage gap at her
school. "Students just don't often show up to career programs. It's kind
of a hard sell," says Daniels. "These women haven't dealt with pay
inequity yet, so it seems far removed from their reality."

If you read this quote, what Daniels says is that STUDENTS aren't
interested in such programming (and my experience would bear this out--I
have had students tell me that the wage gap is OK because "women will
just leave to have babies anyway" so no need to worry about it and thus
no need to learn how to negotiate your salary since you won't be needed
it when you're a stay-at-home mom. But that's another thread)--yet May
then says that it's women's studies that isn't addressing the pay gap.
These are not at all the same thing.

My second point relates to the question of what students should expect
from their academic courses. I also teach beginning German and we do not
hold sessions on how to negoiate a salary, how to interview, etc. in
that course (unless it's the chapter theme and they do it in German). If
my German students want to learn how to get a job, the German club could
hold a session with the Int'l office or career center specifically
tailored to German majors--it simply doesn't belong in German 101 (or an
upper-level literature course for that matter). Similarly, I would argue
that my role in Intro. To Women's Studies is to teach my students how to
think theoretically about women's issues and how those issues apply to
their daily lives (and again, I think we do that despite what the quote
in the article implied), and not to give them practical trainining in
how to get a job. We *do* address practical job issues in the internship
course, and as mentioned, I do practical training through the women's
center, but I don't think "how to find a job" belongs in an academic
course. Yes, I think we need to do some blurring of the academic vs.
student affairs divide, but I also think that there is room for some
separation of spheres.

Finally, as an aside, I find it incredibly irritating that the reporter
asked an economist to comment on women's studies as a discipline. (But
that doesn't really relate to teaching so I'll shut up now before Joan
does it for me).

Best,
Brenda

Brenda Bethman
Director, UMKC Women's Center
105 Haag Hall
University of Missouri-Kansas City
bethmanb  AT  umkc.edu

While we're egregiously off topic, I'll mention that a union bargained,
standardized pay system for faculty, like we have in many community
colleges, makes this kind of gender wage gap impossible.  Why should
individual faculty be obligated to negotiate a salary?

Miles Jackson
cqmv  AT  pdx.edu

I'm just passing on to the list what some young women said. There are a lot
of colleges, and some surely to better than others at preparing women for
life post-college.  I don't think women's studies is much like first-year
German.
Katha Pollitt
katha.pollitt  AT  gmail.com

I wonder how much students would learn about negotiating in the
corporate world if a Women & Work course (or any other course, for that
matter) adjusted grades to correspond with the pay gap!  And wouldn't
that make the problem seem very real to them?
Nancy

I agree with Katha that it's not about whether or not the wage gap is 
taught. We all know that we teach about it and can find the subject in 
just about all the Intro textbooks. The problem is that there's a 
(perceived) disconnect between theory and action. And that's not to say 
that it's the responsibility of Women's Studies to teach students how 
to apply the information we give them to their own lives. When I was an 
undergraduate in Women's Studies, though, this was often my complaint. 
You dump all this stuff on me and then don't tell me what to DO about 
it? I'll say it; I did feel that Women's Studies failed me in some 
ways. Taking Women's Studies is not the same as taking a German class. 
Women's Studies changes lives, doesn't it? It changed my life unlike 
any other discipline I encountered in college. And because Women's 
Studies as a discipline has activist roots, I assumed, maybe unfairly, 
that there would be an action component in addition to all the 
theoretical stuff. I think that's where this report is coming from.

Now that I'm an instructor I see the same frustration in my own 
students. They genuinely want to know how to solve the problems that 
are exposed to them in Women's Studies courses. Perhaps campus Women's 
Resource and Action Centers should (and often do!) address these 
issues, but a lot of campuses, mine included, do not have a Women's 
Center. I don't think Women's Studies should take this report 
personally. I also don't think we should dismiss it and leave it to the 
Women's Centers or the student clubs to address. This is an opportunity 
to talk about a real problem young women are facing. What role, if any, 
should Women's Studies play?

----------------------------------
Shereen Siddiqui
Instructor--Women's Studies Center
Florida Atlantic University
siddiqui  AT  fau.edu
"Inaction is a weapon of mass destruction." --Faithless

From bethmanb  AT  UMKC.EDU Wed Apr 25 10:19:36 2007

Reply-To: Women's Studies List <WMST-L  AT  LISTSERV.UMD.EDU>
To: WMST-L  AT  LISTSERV.UMD.EDU

This is a different conversation than the one the article brought up, I
think. What we are now talking about is *how* to teach the pay gap, etc.
whereas the article implied that women's studies "skirts the subject."
In my book, those are two different things and I still believe that the
original quotes in the article implied that it simply was never being
mentioned on campus, which in my opinion is hooey.

I think we could discuss endlessly the question of *how* but one thing I
would encourage women's studies folks to do is to reach out to the folks
on campus who do this kind of work (women's centers if you have one,
career centers, student clubs, etc.) to start that conversation.

And finally--to those of you who say studying German doesn't change your
life, you've obviously never taught a language/culture class. If you do
it right, learning another language (which means learning another
culture) can indeed change the way students think about their culture
and that can be life-changing. It may be a different kind of
life-changing than women's studies, but can be no less profound.

Best,
Brenda

Brenda Bethman
Director, UMKC Women's Center
105 Haag Hall
University of Missouri-Kansas City
bethmanb  AT  umkc.edu

My book "The Economic Emergence of Women" (Palgrave, 2005) has
(nontechnical)chapters: 

Women's Place in the Labor Market
Occupational Segregation by Sex: The Root of Women's Disadvantage
Setting the Pay for the Jobs Women Hold
Government Action Against Discrimination
Affirmative Action and Pay Equity

The bottom line is that substantially all of the current wage gap can be
attributed to discrimination.

For permission for class use of part of the book contact the publisher. 
_____________________________
Barbara R. Bergmann
Professor Emerita of Economics, University of Maryland and American
University
///mailing address: 5430 41 Place NW, DC 20015
brberg  AT  verizon.net 

If there's at least an acknowledgement of a disconnect (perception is reality)
between theory and action in USWS, that's a great start. But then with
acknowledgment of inequity comes responsibility to contest and dismantle
inequity. Who else is supposed to do this, if not USWS -- the predominantly
white male academy?

 I think it's extremely important throughout USWS to critically examine the
"disconnect" and take steps to erase it. And the way to do that in my view is
to get involved in feminist organizations as part of any scholarly endeavor.

 Organizations like the National Women's Studies Association are particularly
receptive, even while resistant, to wide-ranging feminist activism that is
grounded in examination of existing structures and organizational arrangements
in the feminist academy. It should be obvious that the feminist academy does
not operate in a vacuum and that it articulates with other structures in a
relationship of unequal, racialized power. Activism in fact improves feminists'
collective ability to make theory that is critically relevant for the equitable
expansion and influence of USWS.

 chithra karunakaran
 Anti White Supremacy Task Force
 NWSA 
 ckarunakaran03  AT  aim.com
 -----------------------------------
 -----Original Message-----From: siddiqui  AT  FAU.EDU
The problem is that there's a (perceived) disconnect between theory and action.
And that's not to say that it's the responsibility of Women's Studies to teach
students how to apply the information we give them to their own lives......