Closing the wage gap

I would like to thank Rachel Goldberg for her column Oct. 7. She wrote mostly about women in the media, but she also touched on the still-present wage gap for women today. Gee, we’re all the way up to 72 cents per hour for each dollar men make for the same or comparable work.

“We’ve come a long way, baby!” would be a vast understatement from the 67 cents per hour estimated for the early 1970s, when I was on the Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Another bright young female writer, Alexandra Chtchedrina, had an article in the IDS about this time last year advocating women being included in IU President Michael McRobbie’s diversity money projects. Unfortunately, none of the million dollars involved was funneled toward projects for women, whose long history of fighting for equal rights often parallels that of the African-American and other minorities’ struggles.

My fear for young women of today is that they take for granted the rights that have been fought for and won in the several “women’s” or “feminist” movements in the United States, since they have never lived without them. Many rights were once not extended to women – the right not to be considered the chattel of men, the right to own land in their own name, the right to an education, the right to vote (and differently than their husbands), the right to work (and not be accused of taking a man’s job), the right to use their own names (as opposed to being identified as some man’s wife – e.g., Mrs. James Watson), the right to join the U.S. Army without higher admission standards than men, and so on.

It was not that long ago (OK, so maybe it was), when the term “Ms.” was proposed as the feminine alternate to “Mr.,” allowing women to be considered in their own right in society, not as just an appendage to their husbands; when women had no choice about either the timing or even whether to become mothers; when women were accused of taking some man’s job, if they were able to find one to help meet family expenses.

We had to make waves to force changes back then, and waves are still needed now. We cannot rest until gender is no longer a cause for denying legal rights of any kind to either gender. Attitude adjustments will take a bit longer.

Cheryl Haium, Secretary
Office of the Assistant Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs