A Labor Day reflection

We welcome Janet James, a current YWCA Board member, as our third guest blogger. Janet is the Assistant Attorney General at the West Virginia Attorney General's Office in Charleston, WV and has served on the YWCA of Charleston's Board of Directors since 2005.

Yesterday, we celebrated Labor Day to commemorate the social and economic achievements of American workers. While our nation has truly made great progress since Labor Day was first declared a federal holiday over a century ago, we recognize that many changes still need to be made.

The fact is, women still lag behind men in education and in earnings. Although progress has been made, especially in the last three decades, there remain monumental gaps in the real-world equities between men and women. White women continue to earn a mere 77 cents to every dollar a man makes, while for black and Hispanic women the gap is even greater, dropping to 65 cents on the dollar for black women, and 54 cents for Hispanic women.

Over the course of a career, this puts a woman hundreds of thousands of dollars behind a man. Over a lifetime, a young woman who graduates from high school this year and goes straight to work at $20,000 a year will make $700,000 less than a young man who graduates with her; a woman who graduates from college into a $30,000 starting salary will make $1.2 million less than a young man graduating with her; and a young woman who gets a degree in business, medicine or law and graduates into a $70,000 a year job will make $2 million less than her male classmate. Only 11 of the Fortune 500 companies are led by women, and women make up only 14.7 percent of the board seats of Fortune 500 companies.

The wage gap is the result of a variety of forms of sex discrimination in the workplace, including discrimination in hiring, promotion and pay, sexual harassment, occupational segregation, bias against mothers (in 2005, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported 4,449 charges of pregnancy-based discrimination), and other ways in which women workers and women’s work are undervalued. The long-standing stereotypes associated with men and women contributes to this problem. In the workplace, men are considered more likely to take charge of a situation. Women are considered sympathetic, caring and more supportive, and not as capable at solving problems, a necessary quality in CEOs.

As a consequence of this economic disparity, women are also greatly under-represented in local, state and national political government. This economic and political disparity causes a steady drain on women’s receiving better medical treatment, child care, housing, food, and retirement savings; and worse, places women at a greater risk of homelessness, or inability to leave abusive domestic situations.

Since its inception in 1858, the YWCA has fought for women’s rights, notably in the women’s suffrage movement, and later in the civil rights movement. Today, Racial Justice and the Economic Empowerment of Women are two of the national YWCA’s hallmark programs. Through programs like the YWCA Sojourner's Job Education/Readiness Center, the YWCA of Charleston works daily to promote education and economic empowerment here in our city.