Are women worth three-fourths of men? Sure they are -- at least that's what the gender wage disparity would have you believe.
With the University's release of the Gender Equity Report in December 2001, there has been much focus at Penn about employment equality in its faculty. However, as a panel discussion -- "Are Women Worth 3/4 of Men?" -- illustrated Thursday night, many issues with the wage gender gap stem from lower wage jobs.
The all-female panel consisted of those active in women's labor issues, spanning from child care to factory work.
Panelist Janice Madden, a professor of sociology and real estate at Penn, began the discussion with general information about the wage gap. Background and statistics included the source of the event's title -- women working full time earn just 77 percent of men's wages.
The panelists then cited several factors for the wage disparity. Primarily, outright discrimination accounts for the discrepancy. Additionally, discrimination lies at the root of other contributing factors, including work experience and differences in occupations.
And while the panel set out to broadly examine the wage gap issue, much of the discussion focused on women, or the lack thereof, in blue-collar positions.
An influential figure in integrating the work force, panelist Linda Lyons Butler spoke about the issue. Butler is the executive director of Tradeswomen of Purpose/Women in Non-Traditional Work, an organization that trains women to enter the often male-dominated, blue-collar workforce.
She insisted that "we have a tremendous amount of work to do in terms of women entering nontraditional jobs."
This work includes training women in "survival skills" so that those in Butler's program can learn how to deal with often being the sole woman in the workplace.
In fact, by teaching women to deal with on-site discrimination in an environment "where they will no doubt encounter harassment," her program has maintained a high success rate of placing women in "nontraditional" jobs.
And such discrimination occurs not only at the workplace, but also throughout society, where both men and women are rarely encouraged to break occupational gender stereotypes.
"We routinely say, 'This is a woman's job, and this is a man's job,'" Butler said. "And there is a problem with that."
As a solution to the problem, panelists widely praised positive developments at the hands of unions.
Panelist Katherine Black, nationally active with gender equity issues, also spoke about the positive effects of "collective action," but noted that "there's still a lot of work to do before we're going to have equality."
The discussion was sponsored by Penn's Alice Paul Center for Research on Women and Gender.
