Economic equity news is a weekly round-up of articles by Donna Seymour of AAUW-NYS that features our core values of poverty solutions, opportunity and access, workplace fairness, healthy lives, equal pay and representation at all tables. Sign up for our mailing list to receive this directly to your inbox.
- Depression and anxiety in women linked to male-female pay gap via The Guardian
Researchers say legislation could address issue after they find correlation between difference in earnings and health problems. The wage gap in the US could be making women ill, says a study showing women with lower incomes than their male counterparts are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety.
You could be forgiven for thinking that right-wing hysteria over women’s rights had hit its peak in 2015, a year when conservatives decided to make public enemy No. 1 out of Planned Parenthood, an organization quite clearly chosen because it has long symbolized women’s right to sexual autonomy. But things might get even worse in 2016, for two major reasons. One, the Supreme Court will hear a case that is functionally about overturning Roe v. Wade and reinstituting state bans on abortion. Two, the presidential election will almost certainly be a match-up between an anti-choice man and a pro-choice woman, making the whole contest starkly symbolic of the struggle between women who want full equality and those who want to restore women to second-class status
- Ambitious Women Must Use Their Social Capital to Reach Top Jobs via ScienceDaily
Aspirational professional women would benefit from a better understanding of how to build, maintain and use their social capital to succeed in reaching the top, say authors of a new report. Natasha Abajian said: “Access to social networks typically differs for men and for women. Usually women have less access to networks associated with career progression. These networks or ‘who you know and who knows you’ are responsible for a large percentage of career progression so limited access could be a barrier to women’s opportunities.”
- Asian American women are closing the gap with white men, but that’s not the point via The Washington Post
On Monday, an economist at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute had something snarky to say about a new government report on the gap between men’s and women’s earnings. Economist Mark Perry wrote that the median Asian American woman earns only about 3 percent less than the median American man, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The median Asian American woman also earns significantly more than the median black or Hispanic man in the United States.
- Why STEM’s Future Rests In The Hands Of 12-Year-Old Girls via TechCrunch
How do we empower elementary school girls to embrace an interest in STEM and develop leadership skills that will help them navigate their way through school to be prepared to choose any career, including STEM? How can educators address the main factors at this critical 9- to 12-year-old window that are standing in the way of more girls going into STEM fields?
Donna Seymour, who hails from the (far upstate) North Country of NYS, has spent 40 plus years advocating for children, women and family issues, equity, sustainability, and social justice issues. Currently serving as the Public Policy VP for AAUW-NYS (the American Association University Women), she is also a member the League of Women Voters, the Equal Pay Coalition, PTA, NOW, and Planned Parenthood, just to name a few.