Womenstake

Thank you, Congress

by Lara Kaufmann, Senior Advisor
National Women’s Law Center

Ever wonder what Congress is up to while most of the country (or the media, at least) is focused on the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination? Well, the House Science and Technology Committee (the Research and Science Education Subcommittee) had a hearing this morning about the participation of women and girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) studies and careers. And we understand that Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson plans to introduce the Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008, which provides for federal programs to address the institutional and cultural barriers to recruitment and retention of women faculty in science and engineering fields, including: workshops to increase awareness of implicit gender bias in grant review, hiring, tenure, promotion, and selection for other honors based on merit; extended grant support for caregivers; and improved demographic data collection on federal grant-making. We welcome and appreciate Congress’ attention to these important issues.

7 Questions with NWLC's Lara Kaufmann

by Jessica Lauredan, Outreach Intern
National Women’s Law Center

This post is part of a series profiling our blog authors.

Lara Kaufmann is Senior Advisor for Education and Employment at NWLC.

Q: The Senate’s recent vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was a setback in the movement to make pay equity a reality. What will happen next? And how can women join the fight for fair pay?
Lara: The fight is not over yet! We didn’t get the 60 votes necessary to move to the next big step in the Senate — scheduling a debate and a vote on the merits of the bill — but we got very close, and we are calling on the Senate leadership to continue to bring up the bill until it passes. Women (and men) who support equal pay can help by contacting their Senators and encouraging them to support (or, in some cases, to continue supporting) the bill. There are simple instructions on our website for how to do this. It only takes a minute, and it’s really worth it — Senators do pay attention to what their constituents want. Also, there are two more bills pending before Congress right now that address fair pay, one called the Paycheck Fairness Act and one called the Fair Pay Act. Our fact sheet on Pay Equity has information on both of those initiatives too.

Q: The Fair Pay Act has come before the Senate during an election year. Do you think the bill will have an impact on the campaigns, or vice versa?
Lara:  Both, actually. It is just a coincidence that this is being considered in an election year (the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was introduced following the Supreme Court’s May 2007 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, and the House of Representatives passed it back in July 2007). But because of the timing, it may be discussed during presidential debates, which means that more Americans will learn about it than otherwise might, and I think that's a good thing. Senators Clinton and Obama were original cosponsors of the bill and support it, while Senator McCain stated to reporters that he opposes it. We hope voters will take the opportunity to ask all three Senators about this issue and press them to support, or continue to support, the bill.

Unfair Play on Bill for Fair Pay

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Advisor
National Women’s Law Center

Don’t you hate it when a sound bite completely confuses a critical issue? Yesterday the Boston Globe quoted Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) saying the following on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: “We think that this bill is primarily designed to create a massive amount of new litigation in our country, and I think that is the reason for the resistance to its passage on our side.”

Senator McConnell is just plain wrong. The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was not designed to – nor will it – create litigation; it was designed to restore the law to what it was until last May, when the Supreme Court rolled back the long-standing rights of those suffering from pay discrimination. In fact, it is the Ledbetter decision – not the restorative legislation – that increases the likelihood of litigation. Under the Supreme Court’s ruling, people who have even the slightest suspicion that they are subject to pay discrimination will have to rush into the EEOC to avoid forfeiting their claims. They will not be able to take the time to evaluate their claims, negotiate with their employers and look for voluntary solutions to the pay disparity. That’s not a system any employer should welcome. (For more information on the Ledbetter case and bill, click here.) 

Lilly Ledbetter was not looking for a lawsuit. Had she been paid fairly, equal to what the men doing the same work at Goodyear were being paid, we would never have heard of her, and I’m sure that would have been just fine with her. But she wasn’t paid fairly, solely because she was a woman, and her employer successfully hid that fact for much of the time she worked at the plant. In fact, she never would have found out about it had a coworker not left her an anonymous note close to the end of her career. Lilly had a right to try to correct that injustice.

Webinar on the Dropout Crisis for Girls — A Huge Success, But Just the Beginning!

by Lara Kaufmann, Senior Advisor
National Women’s Law Center

Just about a month ago, the National Women’s Law Center released a report entitled When Girls Don’t Graduate, We All Fail: A Call to Improve High School Graduation Rates for Girls. For those of you who missed the report, don’t despair! There’s an opportunity to see a distillation of its main points — namely, that there is a dropout crisis for girls in our nation’s schools and that that crisis results in severe economic consequences for young women and their families — in the PowerPoint presentation we prepared for a webinar on Wednesday. 

The 210 participants in the webinar asked probing questions, which shows the level of interest in these issues. We’re excited about channeling this energy to advocate for and implement reforms that will improve the graduation rates and economic prospects of young women in this country.

Those reforms can start with getting better information about the ways in which gender influences the reasons students drop out and the interventions that will work to avoid that result and get them back on track. There really isn’t much research out there, and Congress should fund research further exploring how the risk factors for dropping out, and the most effective interventions, may be different for boys and girls. And the data schools are required to collect and maintain under No Child Left Behind should be broken down (“disaggregated”) by subgroups such as gender, race, and disability, as well as by whether the student is an English language learner, an economically disadvantaged student, or pregnant or parenting, as well as “cross-tabulated” to allow analysis of subgroups of students. While these requirements sound technical, they are important — better tracking of the types of students in our schools, the number who graduate, and the type of education they are receiving would benefit all students, but especially those (such as pregnant and parenting teens) who are otherwise likely to fall through the cracks.

Getting these requirements into NCLB would be just the beginning — but an important start. Any efforts to remedy the high school dropout crisis in this country must take into account the particular educational experiences and dropout rates of female students, because the limited research done to date confirms what we might have suspected — gender matters.