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Economic Equity News: October 2, 2015

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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.

Empire State Development today awarded NoVo Foundation, in collaboration with Goren Group, rights to restore and redevelop the former Bayview Correctional Facility, located at 550 West 20th Street, New York, into The Women’s Building. The medium-security women’s prison will be reclaimed by girls’ and women’s rights groups working to create a world free from violence, poverty, and injustice. The Women’s Building will serve as a hub for the women’s movement, service providers, and the community.

It sounds like something out of the Dark Ages – shackling a pregnant woman during pregnancy and labor – doesn’t it? Yet in the second decade of the 21st century, this is still happening here in New York state. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that countless medical professionals across the state think this is bad idea, as does most of the NYS Assembly and all of the NYS Senate, who passed the 2015 Anti-Shackling Bill on June 23. Governor Andrew Cuomo can, with the stroke of his pen, right these human rights violations and bring New York state up to modern correctional practice.

Latina workers suffer from the worst gender wage gap in the country, making just 55 cents on the dollar earned by white men (and just 44 cents on the dollar in California). Contributing to this gap is the overrepresentation of women in low-wage jobs, and the overconcentration of Latinas in low-wage jobs like domestic work. According to the National Domestic Worker Alliance (NDWA), 95% of domestic workers are women, and Latinas predominate in the profession in states like California. Domestic workers include nannies, caregivers, and housekeepers. They are central to the U.S. economy and to the functioning of millions of families. Yet many are widely exploited and ignored by the law.

Four kids—and a YouTube star—will make you care about unequal pay. If you don’t understand what all the pay gap fuss is about, this new video should do the trick. On Tuesday, Make it Work, an advocacy group for economic security, released a two-and-a-half minute video as part of its campaign to raise awareness of unequal pay in advance of the 2016 election.

“Women’s empowerment is not just a fundamentally moral cause, it is also an absolute economic no-brainer,” Ms. Lagarde said in a keynote speech at the W-20, an ancillary conference launched by the Group of 20 largest economies aimed at boosting gender parity in the global workforce. “It holds the potential to boost growth, raise overall per capita income, tackle poverty, and reduce income inequality for people all over the world,” the IMF chief said. The G-20 pledged last year to reduce the gap in women’s labor-force participation by 25% over the next decade, a goal the group says could create 100 million new jobs across the world.

 

 

Donna Seymour, who hales 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 Universality Women), she also is a member the League of Women Voters, the Equal Pay Coalition, PTA, NOW, and Planned Parenthood, just to name a few.