Eva interviewed on Equal Pay Day
My close friend Eva is the incoming President for the State of Florida Business and Professional Women. BPW's key platform item is women's equal pay and Equal Pay day is a signature event for the organization.
The Orlando Sentinel did an article about the day and interviewed Eva..........
COMMENTARY:SUSAN STROTHER CLARKE
Pay equation doesn't add up
Susan Strother ClarkeBUSINESS COMMENTARY
April 26, 2006
When my mother was my age, she earned 63 cents for every $1 earned by a man.
Twenty-four years later, I'm earning 77 cents for every buck a guy pulls down.
I wouldn't call that progress.
I would call that something that can't be printed in the newspaper.
I bring this up because Tuesday was Equal Pay Day. It commemorated a sad fact: For a woman to earn what a man earns in 12 months, she has to work nearly 16 months -- or nearly through April of the next year.
In Washington, the day was marked with a news conference hosted by the National Committee on Pay Equity, a coalition of women's business groups.
In Orlando, it was recognized with an "unhappy" hour at the Citrus Club hosted by Eva Krzewinski, a business owner and incoming president of Business and Professional Women/Florida.
"This isn't some wild feminists' movement," said Krzewinski, owner of The Training Workz, a company that trains employees. "This is talking off the facts. We want to educate people."
This is radical only if you think the U.S. Census Bureau is a fringe group. Its data show that in every profession, the median income of women is below men.
Women health techs earn 78 percent of their male counterparts. Women in arts and entertainment earn 73 percent of men. Women educators earn 74 percent. Women in math and computers earn 84 percent.
One reason for this may be that rarely are women in charge. Among the highest-paid executives at public companies in Orlando, not a single woman made the list compiled by the Sentinel last year.
In fact, women made the list only eight times in a dozen years -- while men were on the list more than 1,000 times.
So, let's agree there's a problem. How do we fix it? Some people call for better laws, more lawsuits or gender and salary audits at companies.
Here's an idea put forth by Evelyn Murphy, an economist, author and former lieutenant governor of Massachusetts.
She says women need to form "wage" clubs. They would get together, talk about salary, collect their facts and then go to the bosses with their findings.
The goal would be to raise awareness and push for change. There aren't any clubs yet in Orlando -- but hopefully there will be.
And when that happens, men should join, too. This isn't just a woman's issue. It's a family issue. Half the married households have both partners in the work force. If one partner isn't paid fairly, everyone suffers -- including the kids who may not get to the doctor or into the college of their choice.
In some instances, there may be legitimate, social reasons for pay differences. But you cannot explain away the entire pay gap with the old explanations that women are less educated than men, that they take time off to have kids or that they are in more menial jobs.
Women earn less because decision-makers don't place the same value on women and the jobs they hold as they do on men.
There's a name for that. It's discrimination.
Susan Strother Clarke can be reached at sclarke@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5414.
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