Economic equity news is a weekly round-up of articles by Donna Seymour of AAUW-NYS that features our core values of poverty solutions, opportunity and access, workplace fairness, healthy lives, equal pay and representation at all tables. Sign up for our mailing list to receive this directly to your inbox.
A new analysis from the Center for American Progress (CAP), which houses ThinkProgress, finds that between 1963 and 2013, income inequality among the bottom 95 percent of married couples increased by nearly 25 percent. Yet without a concurrent increase in women’s earnings, which rose fivefold over the same period, inequality would have grown more than 50 percent faster, rising instead by 38 percent. “This analysis shows that married women’s rising earnings have been a critical countervailing force against the growth of income inequality over the past 50 years,” writes Brendan V. Duke, who produced the analysis.
- Gender Pay Gap Drives Inequality via Truth-Out
According to a recent report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, at the current rate, women will not see equal pay until 2059—one year later than the group’s findings from the previous year. 2059 is a long time from now. And certainly too long a wait for women who need to put food on their families’ tables today. Is the solution as simple as employers paying women more for their work?
- 10 Women Inducted At The National Women’s Hall of Fame via WXXI News
Ten women whose influence continues to be felt in the fields of science, the arts and civil rights are the newest inductees into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. They include dance pioneer Martha Graham and Feminist Majority founder Eleanor Smeal.
- Gender gap in cybersecurity widens, survey shows via The Hill
Just one in ten cybersecurity professionals are women, a percentage that appears to be shrinking amidst a growing workforce shortage in the field, a new survey shows. ICS2, which certifies cybersecurity professionals, said Monday that only 10 percent of 14,000 IT security professionals in developed countries were women — down from 11 percent last year.
- VIDEO: To Fight Inequality, Support Women and Families via Center for American Progress
Access to essential work-family supports such as paid family leave varies sharply by income level in the United States. Currently, the country’s highest earners are more than five times as likely than its lowest earners to have access to paid family and medical leave. This inequality of access both reinforces and reproduces inequalities of income, wealth, and life outcomes for successive generations. In order to level the playing field, families need policies that give everyone equal protection from the income shocks that too often go hand in hand with caregiving responsibilities. The nation needs policies that bring paid family leave to all.
Donna Seymour, who hales from the (far upstate) North Country of NYS, has spent 40 plus years advocating for children, women and family issues, equity, sustainability, and social justice issues. Currently serving as the Public Policy VP for AAUW-NYS (the American Association Universality Women), she also is a member the League of Women Voters, the Equal Pay Coalition, PTA, NOW, and Planned Parenthood, just to name a few.