(Un)equal Pay Day: Is it Good News or Bad News?

Issue 193 — March 14, 2022
It’s progress to be sure that March 15 marks Equal Pay Day 2022. Women now earn 83% of what men earn for matched full time work.
Last year the annual recognition of when U.S. women had to work into 2021 before they earned what men earned what men did in just 12 months of 2020 occurred on March 24. The year before that, the day was March 31.

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How to Solve the “Great Resignation”

Issue 184 — November 15, 2021
The Microsoft Work Trend Index says over 40% of the global workforce is considering leaving their current employer, and 46% plan to make a significant career pivot.
This and other recent studies have pundits and business leaders wringing their hands about the difficulty of filling jobs in the wake of the pandemic’s massive economic disruption.

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The Great Returnship, or What’s a Leader to Do to About It?

Issue 182 — October 25, 2021
The buzz is everywhere now. Are you in the office yet? As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with the Shecession and the Great Resignation, now comes the Great Returnship.
And since women have lost or left more jobs than men and have been slower to return, special emphasis must be placed on Take The Lead’s goal to #putwomenatthecenter of the recovery. There are so many questions.
Is your workplace ready? Does your boss want you to come back to work in person but you aren’t so sure you are ready? Are you anxious about getting back among larger groups of people?

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How to Celebrate Labor Day: Sit in the High Seats

Issue 106 — September 2, 2019 Are you one of the 46 percent of Americans who’ll barbecue over Labor Day weekend? Will it be ribs, hot dogs, burgers, or veggies? Or will you be one of the 25 percent who’ll be shopping? Google “Labor Day” and the majority of top hits involve Labor Day sales. These and other…

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The Value of Women's Work

There has been a marked change in the estimate of [women’s] position as wealth producers. We have never been “supported” by men; for if all men labored hard every hour of the twenty-four, they could not do all the work of the world. A few worthless women there are, but even they are not so much supported by the men of their family as by the overwork of the “sweated” women at the other end of the social ladder. From creation’s dawn. our sex has done its full share of the world’s work; sometimes we have been paid for it, but oftener not.

Any idea when this statement was made? OK, a clue: I recently ran across it in a speech given by Harriot Stanton Blatch at a suffragist convention–in 1898.

Isn’t it amazing that Blatch made this argument 113 years ago? Her point still resonates today. A study released by the Center for American Progress shows that in the down economy, women increasingly became the sole breadwinners, despite the persistent wage gap, since men were being laid off at higher rates to trim companies’ bottom line. More and more men became “stay-at-home fathers.” And yet we aren’t seeing a change in workplace culture as a result.

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The Value of Work Deja Vu All Over Again

There has been a marked change in the estimate of [women’s] position as wealth producers. We have never been “supported” by men; for if all men labored hard every hour of the twenty-four, they could not do all the work of the world. A few worthless women there are, but even they are not so much supported by the men of their family as by the overwork of the “sweated” women at the other end of the social ladder. From creation’s dawn. our sex has done its full share of the world’s work; sometimes we have been paid for it, but oftener not.

Any idea when this statement was made? OK, a clue: I recently ran across it in a speech given by Harriot Stanton Blatch at a suffragist convention–in 1898.

Blatch went on to raise issues much like what Ai-Jen Poo said at the “Unfinished Business” program 111 years later, what Moms Rising has organized itself to organize the troops about now, and what dozens if not hundreds of bloggers will be talking about this weekend over at Fem 2.0:

Unpaid work never commands respect; it is the paid worker who has brought to the public mind conviction of woman’s worth…If we would recognize the democratic side of our cause, and make an organized appeal to industrial women on the ground of their need of citizenship, and to the nation on the ground of its need that all wealth producers should form part of its body politic, the close of the century might witness the building up of a true republic in the United States.

Yep, don’t agonize: organize. Band together to make the workplace and worklife such that people of both genders can both earn a living and have a life. This is the necessary next wave of the feminist movement, one in which both men and women must participate. Because these days, men want to participate in their children’s lives as women have always done.

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Today’s Power Point: Where Were the Women at Davos?

Check out this info from the Aurora Monthly Newsletter put out by wheretowork.com:

Following recent headlines about the lack of women at Davos again this year, women question the role of such a forum if it doesn’t comprise diverse leadership. The World Economic Forum’s own leadership structure that sets the agenda and decides who attends is not gender diverse. 4 / 22 foundation board members are women. There are 0 women on the managing board responsible for WEF’s operations and running. 2 / 10 senior directors responsible for subject areas within WEF are female. It ‘d be quite insightful to know which corporations and Governments in attendance at Davos sent mixed gender delegations.

In chaos is opportunity. Mark my words, despite the many real dangers that women (being often the last hired) might face heightened vulnerability to losing jobs during an economic downturn, the current economic chaos is great opportunity for women to advance.

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MomsRising–The Women’s and Men’s Movement of Tomorrow

I took an early morning walk today in Central Park with Joan Blades, founder with her husband Wes Boyd, of the progressive political on-line grassroots powerhouse, moveon.org. But her agenda wasn’t moveon.com. Joan is a serial entrepreneur and a very successful one, whether creating a software company or a new nonprofit organization. It was the latter she wanted to talk with me about today: her latest venture, MomsRising.

Joan has plunged her creative hands into a key mobilizing issue of the day, building a more family-friendly America in the workplace and public policy. Fresh from getting the New Jersey legislature to pass a paid sick leave measure, she brought me up to date on the organization she started in 2006 in response to her own experiences as a mom in the workplace.

MomsRising has over 140,000 citizen members already and is aiming for 1,000,000 to participate in their citizen advocacy agenda. Over 85 national and state organizations have aligned with MomsRising to create a coalition that works at the state and national levels to bringing motherhood and family issues to the forefront of the country’s awareness so they can advance workplace policies such as paid sick leave, maternity and paternity leave, flexible work hours, and equal pay for equal work. Quality childcare and healthcare access are also on their rather large plate. And they’re pumping up their political fundraising so they can do more lobbying on all these issues.

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