Happy Monday!
I wanted to thank all the women that came out Saturday for our shooting event at the Austin Gun Club. A great time was had by all, and I was very impressed with the marksmanship of the women that attended!
A lot of great reading this last week, but one article really stood out – Frank Bruni’s Women’s Unequal Lot and can be found here:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/
In the article, Frank Bruni focuses on the hot topic of the moment – equal pay for women. In the article, he explores the complexity of this issue by focusing on his sister – a woman who works part time, raises her children and volunteers in her community. I was struck by how proud he is of his sister and her accomplishments.
In the article Mr. Bruni dives into the reality behind the .77 for every $1 statistic as follows:
“When all of that comes into play and hourly income is calculated, women make 84 cents for every dollar that men do, according to the Pew Research Center. Even that 16-cent difference, though, isn’t entirely about women earning less money for the same work. It’s influenced by many factors, including the greater percentage of women who slow down their careers because of child-rearing responsibilities and fall behind.To wit: Among younger women, many of whom have yet to hit that pause button, the hourly “wage gap” is 93 cents on the dollar, according to Pew’s number crunching. Other analyses reach similar conclusions.”
“In the White House, women made 88 cents for every dollar that men did last year, according to a review by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and salaries there are determined by hierarchical rank, not managerial discretion. What created the gap wasn’t unequal pay for equal work; it was a concentration of women in lower positions.”
“By suggesting that the chief culprit for women’s inferior earnings is discriminatory pay, the 77-cent figure lets too many men off the hook, not forcing them to confront their culpability as bosses who care too little for women’s advancement, as husbands who prioritize their own careers and as fathers who don’t participate fully around the house. If you put a woman’s paid and unpaid labor beside her husband’s, and they both worked full time and had kids under 6, she was working an extra month.” Now, she said, it’s an extra two weeks.” And this situation pertains largely to affluent women and not to the 40% of women that are heads of households.
“If we’re concerned about all working women, we have to talk about child care, flexible hours, paid leave. We have to talk about gender stereotypes and whether they steer women into professions with lower compensation. We have to talk about the choices that women make and which of those they feel muscled into.”
We have just some amazing events coming up over the next few months. Speaking of supporting girls – please take a moment to buy your ticket to our May Panel event in Dallas. We have a fabulous panel of allocators from some of the biggest pensions in the country and you will not want to miss what they have to say about the markets. The event supports the college dreams of under-served girls across the state, and it is a chance to meet your fellow TXWSW members from across the state!
See you all soon.
Kind regards
Christine
