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.
- Boston is offering free negotiation classes to every woman who works in the city via the Washington Post
Women here earn 83 cents for every dollar paid to men, 4 cents higher than the national statistic. Disparities persist across age groups, industries and companies, researchers have found — even when colleagues of the opposite sex hold identical education levels and job titles. That’s why Boston is offering free, two-hour salary negotiation classes to every woman who works in the city. They started in October, two years after former mayor Thomas Menino pledged that Boston would become the first U.S. city to achieve pay parity.
Interestingly, single men and women without children who said they never prioritized their families over their jobs had equivalent salaries. Married moms made 31% less than married dads overall. Compared to married men with kids in the same jobs, they still made 4.2% less. “When a man becomes a father, he gets a fatherhood bonus; a woman gets a mommy penalty,” said Beverly Neufeld, president of Powher New York, a statewide organization devoted to securing pay equality.
Wangari’ s journey to working at a top-notch tech company like Google has not been an easy one. I was interested in finding out how, as a mom and the primary breadwinner for her family, she managed to continue working in the male-dominated world of computer technology, advance her career, complete a master’s degree, and publish a scholarly article, all at the same time!
The gap in pay between women and men will close, but it will take more than a century for it to happen, at its current rate of improvement. That’s what a new, worldwide study has concluded.
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.