Women's wages, rights still lag behind men

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) is scheduled to deliver a major speech at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday.It is poignant and proper that she should speak on Women's Equality Day, the 88th anniversary of women getting the right to vote. According to some sources, Sen. Clinton will be joined on stage by other women legislators, including the Democratic women of the United States Senate. Her speech is likely to touch on major public policy issues, and also to pay tribute to those that paved the way for her glass ceiling-shattering campaign.

Sen. Clinton's campaign illustrated that the gender playing field is not yet level. We don't need to use her campaign for that illustration, though. Economic data on the status of women suggest that we have a long way to go before women have the same social, economic, political and cultural clout that men have.

The lens of patriarchy so heavily influences the interpretation of the status of women that women who have left the labor market for economic reasons are perceived as having "opted out" because they prefer stay-at-home motherhood. The real deal is that women's wages are lower than men's - still. And some of the jobs that are "typically female" have been taking the same kinds of hits as other jobs have been taking.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report on women's earning in September 2007 that is telling. While the gender wage gap is narrowing, women still earn less than men do.

The median weekly earnings for women was $600, just 81 percent than the $743 that men earn. To be sure, the 19 percent gap is lower than the 27 percent gap reported two decades ago. Still, as former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley Braun asked in the 2004 campaign, will grocers change women less for a dollar loaf of bread? The gap varies by age, education, and other factors, but when we look at the very top, there are glaring inequities.

About 7 percent of women earned the highest wages, $15,000 or more a week, compared to 15 percent of men. If gender equality is coming, it is coming at a snail's pace.

If equality has not yet shattered the glass ceiling, women on the sticky floor of the labor market have also been challenged with inequality. Despite a 12 percent increase in the minimum wage on July 24, those who struggle with poverty and inadequate income have seen their circumstances improve only modestly. More than half of those who earn the minimum wage - 59 percent to be exact - are women. These women work in essential sectors of the labor market - what would we do without food preparers and servers, home health aides, and others. Yet, their wages do not reflect their value to our nation.

The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that women are leaving the labor force. There were about 140,000 fewer women working or looking for work in July than there were the month before. Some would like to say that women are leaving the workforce because they "want" to stay home.

But the reality of this labor market, combined with family economics, suggests that women aren't working because they can't find jobs. Again, it is clear that women, especially those who head households, are the most likely to be challenged by economic hard times.

African-American and Hispanic women are those most likely to live at the bottom, to experience the greatest challenges.

Sen. Hilary Rodham Clinton and her colleagues are likely to have much to share in celebration of the 88th anniversary of women's right to vote. I hope that as they celebrate and honor the foundations of women's suffrage that they also illuminate the economic challenges that women continue to face.

Furthermore, a celebration of women must embrace women in all of our diversity. If Women's Equality Day is "Hillary's Day" at the Democratic Convention, the contribution of women of color like Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells must be lifted up along with the lives of other suffragists.

Julianne Malveaux is an economist and president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C. She may be reached at presoffice@bennett.edu.