Heidi Li's Potpourri

Read it and weep: "the seemingly unbridgeable chasm" that is the gender wage gap

Crossposted from Heidi Li on Equality at 51 Percent.

All quotes from Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller? By HANNAH FAIRFIELD Published: February 28, 2009 - The New York Times (Click graphic to go to large interactive chart). Full story here.

Nearly every occupation has the gap — the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the size of the paycheck brought home by a woman and the larger one earned by a man doing the same job.

"There's no measurable way to explain the gaps within occupations," said Barry T. Hirsh, a labor economist at Georgia State University. "Other wage gaps, like racial gaps, can be almost fully explained by factoring in the differences in education, geography and age." (emphases added)

This is economic misogyny plain and simple; embedded in our economic habits deeply and seemingly insurmountably - although with enough political and legal action not actually insurmountable is a belittling of women's work compared to men's. This sort of systemic, measurable inequity is, to borrow a phrase from Mario Cuomo, a "sin against equality."

A letter to President Obama (or should I say "Jock in Chief")?

Dear President Obama:

One of your Cabinet Secretaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is striking a chord with women abroad and at home as she mixes in, with her discussion of global warming and economic security, the issue of women's empowerment, as a matter of democracy and social justice. Might you consider taking a lesson from the Secretary of State? If you did, you would incorporate her message about the importance of women to democratic politics and economic security into every aspect of your own programs and many of your public statements.

Those of us interested in the emancipation of American women would be delighted to hear you echo Secretary Clinton when she states, "I think that it’s imperative that nations like ours stand up for the rights of women. It is not ancillary to our progress; it is central" or "We have to highlight the importance of inclusion for women. We have to make clear that no democracy can exist without women’s full participation; no economy can be truly a free market without women involved." (Secretary Clinton, February 20, 2009).

You, Mr. President, are in a flurry of summits, initiatives, and speeches, leading up to the announcement of your budget this Thursday, February 26, 2009. Those who wonder whether you understand the significance of women in the U.S. economy need to hear you speak at home in terms your Secretary of State speaks abroad. We need to hear this partly because many of us doubt whether you are as forward thinking about women's issues as we would expect a Democratic president who will be seeking our votes again ought to be but also because we doubt you are as forward thinking about economic matters as we expect a Democratic president to be. Women do not dominate the boardrooms and executive suites of Fortune 500 companies; they do depend heavily on Social Security; they are a major source of small business initiatives in this country. When you discuss "entitlements" or "business" this means something different to the majority of women than it does to the majority of men.

Even in symbolic ways, we need you to do better if you want us to trust your commitment to women's empowerment. Just recently you cooperated with Men's Journal, a men's lifestyle magazine, that along with so many other publications, decided to devote a cover story to you. This is the cover:

For those who cannot read the headline, running alongside a photo of you holding a football in your hands, it says: "Barack Obama, Jock in Chief: His Moves, His Trash Talk & His Weekly Power Basketball Game."

Mr. President, I am not sure whether you are proud of being depicted as a trash-talking jock-in-chief - that seems to me to fulfill both sexist and racist stereotypes you yourself might find personally offensive. But the magazine editors certainly mean this headline to be laudatory, although they would never write the same sort of headline about a woman president or cabinet secretary and mean it to have the connotations of hipness and coolness they meant this one to carry. ("Trash-talking" is not a phrase used to praise powerfully positioned women.)

You, Mr. President, could by word and deed use your bully pulpit to discourage this sort of sexist pigeonholing not only of yourself but therefore of what power is supposed to look like or be like. I have written before about the need for you to convene a Presidential Empowerment of Women Advisory Board, to be as significant and influential with you as you suggest your PERAB and PIAB (Economic Recovery and Intelligence boards, respectively). This is becoming more urgent, not less. If you want the American economy and American democracy to remain strong, you must empower the 51 percent of the population who are women to participate as fully and on fair terms in our society.

Yours truly,

Heidi Li Feldman, founder and president, 51 Percent

Try squaring this circle

Two headlines, side by side, at Rasmussen:

38% Say Stimulus Plan Will Help Economy

Following Passage of Stimulus Bill, Consumer Confidence Falls to Record Low

I understand that one could tell a statistician's story that would make sense of these headlines and some others on Rasmussen's home page today, such as: Confidence in U.S. Banking System Plummets
and
Voters Predicted Congress Would Approve Stimulus Package Without Reading It

But to me, this sounds like a population in panic, mistrustful and nervous about its government and its banking system. When people are gripped by fear they do not reason coherently. In any event one could believe the latest measures by our Congress, taken at the urging of President Obama, will do some good but not very much. This is sort of how I think of Jimmy Carter's entire domestic-side Presidency. Maybe some of what Carter urged did some good, but not very much. And that's part of why he ended up a one-term wonder. (True enough, the Iran hostage rescue debacle didn't help either.)

President Obama needs to stabilize the fear that he unleashed in his inaugural address and his primetime press conference. Maybe he thought being grim and scary would ensure action - it worked for Bush when he wanted to send U.S. troops to Iraq - but grim and scared people do not function well in most social environments.

The payoffs - and obstacles - to attending to women's work in the current economy

From a must-read column by Professor Mimi Abramovitz:

Contrary to popular wisdom, spending on services like health care and education produces a bigger bang for the economic-stimulus buck than billions of dollars devoted to roads and bridges. .... For years service jobs have been "reserved" for women. Could this be why mostly male economists have pushed for "shovel ready" jobs held mostly by men as the way to dig us out of the economic quagmire? Could it be that sustaining the male-breadwinner and female-homemaker division of labor trumped economic good sense?

From Professor Susan Feiner learn about W.E.A.V.E and its position on the current stimulus package:

No. 1: Revive and enforce Labor Department regulations requiring affirmative action for all federal contractors.

No. 2: Set aside apprenticeship and training programs in infrastructure projects for women and people of color. Both groups are seriously underrepresented in the construction trades.

No. 3: Spend recovery money on projects in health, child care, education and social services.

Before going into detail on these three targets, let's also look at two over-arching problems with the current plan: Too meager, too male.

Women make up a huge proportion of the workforce, they own homes in ever greater numbers, they have consumer clout - but economically, women are systemically disadvantaged in ways that make put them at greater financial risk then  men. Whether it be for reasons of justice or reasons of prudence, our country cannot afford economic measures that do not address this disparity in risk. We must design economic programs that put women forward.

(Cross posted at Heidi Li on Equality at 51 Percent)

Tim Geithner; Herbert Hoover - Depression revisited (bumped and updated)

I am not an economist, and do not purport to have expertise in the field. I offer this post based on the claims of Paul Krugman and Barack Obama that the fiscal crisis facing the United States and its citizens today is more comparable to the conditions of the Great Depression than any other crisis faced since then. If that is true, no wonder I find the details of whiz-kid tax evader Tim Geithner's newly renamed Financial Stability Act personally depressing. So, by the way, does Wall Street.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner announced a vast new rescue plan for the financial sector. Stocks plunged following the unveiling of the program to use $1.5 trillion or more in public and private funds to bail out banks and financial institutions and thaw frozen credit markets. The plan would create a $500 billion fund to buy up toxic bank assets such as bad real estate loans and commit up to $1 trillion to reopen lending markets for consumer, student, small business, auto and commercial loans.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 383 points in afternoon trading. The tech-heavy Nasdaq plummeted 63 points, and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index dropped 43 points.

(source)

Here are the highlights of the Geithner plan, according to The New York Times:

Now, read these excerpts from an overview of the Hoover administration's approach to the Great Depression, which set in 6 to 8 years before Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first elected.

A) "The slump in automobile sales was paralleled by the decline in the construction of new housing, causing unemployment in the building trades. Fewer suburban houses meant fewer markets for appliances, wall coverings, and other activities related to home building."

B) "The economy was in trouble but people, dazzled by a surging stock market, ignored it.
The consumer economy was slowing as incomes skewed to the rich. In 1929, the richest 10% of families received 39% of disposal personal income while the bottom 10% only got 2%."

C) "People seemed to be forgetting that capitalism needs to expand, that demand for housing, clothes, automobiles, stoves, and many other consumer goods generates demand in other sectors of the economy. But mass production necessitates mass consumption. Mass consumption necessitates an income distribution that allows consumers to buy. Without the appropriate income distribution, warehouses will burst at their seams and production lines will clog."

D) "Many of the wealthy, as well as others, joined the speculative stock market sending stock prices to greater and greater without regard to company performance; In October, 1929, the bubble burst. The crash meant the tremendous loss of capital as prices declined $74 billion from 1929 to 1932 and the repatriation of much of US investment abroad."

E) "As historians Peter N. Carroll and David W. Noble note, Hoover feared that the collapse of the large corporations would bring down the entire US capitalist system. After all, one percent of the banks held 50% of banking assets. Three corporations—Ford, Chrysler, General Motors—manufactured 85% of the automobiles sold in the US. Chain stores dominated retail sales and their difficulties had national repercussions.

Business and industry met the crisis as they had always done—they cut production, lowered wages, reduced working hours, and fired workers. Unemployment rose from 1.5 million in 1929 to 13 million in 1933, a figure which represented 25% of the labor force. Even such a high percentage hid the dimensions of the problem because it did not what percentage had been forced the part-time work. Industrial wages fell from $425 a week to $17 a week, a decline of 32%."

F) "To help the situation, the Hoover administration sept close to a billion dollars in public works programs but he would not go further. Nor would he argue for direct relief to the unemployed and starving because he feared that doing so would corrupt them."

G) "Hoover and the Republicans saw aid to corporations as being different. Whereas they believed that helping the individual citizen weather the Depression would corrupt him or her, aiding corporations and other business was different. To many, it appeared that the Republicans were only interested in the rich. The newly-created Reconstruction Finance Corporation aided only the large corporations.

Hoover broke precedent because the national government assumed some responsibility for what happens during an economic depression but he was not willing to go far enough. He believed that the depression was part of the normal business cycle and had been caused by international factors and not US ones. to him, 'prosperity was just around the corner.' The best thing for the country to do would be to wait the crisis out."

I am in no position to know just how deeply or robustly FDR's New Deal reforms have insulated us from a new Great Depression. But with a Nobel Laureate and the President of the United States telling me that we are in a state of disaster, I find it depressing that the Treasury Secretary's plan sounds much more Hooverian than FDR-like.

I know the economy is not going to do an about face on a dime. I do not need Secretary Geithner or President Obama to tell me that. But with trillions of dollars going to banking corporations and relatively little aid going to those who are rapidly falling into more dire straits than they imagined possible, I cannot help but feel as so many of us did when George W. Bush whisked us into war in Iraq. In the words of author Anne Lamott: "I don't know who on the left can lead us away from the craziness and the barbarity: I've very confused now."

Lamott wrote those words when she was criticizing George W. Bush for deceiving the American people. Sauce for Bush should be sauce for Obama. One problem with the Geithner plan is "lack of transparency". Deception: a post-partisan kind of thing.

U.S. Department of Labor -- Women's Bureau: Kim Gandy is no Mary Anderson

I have been given to understand that a) Kim Gandy, currently President of N.O.W. (National Organization for Women) wants to become head of the Women's Bureau at the Department of Labor and that b) today, February 8, 2009, a number of bloggers will be discussing whether appointing her to the job is a good idea. That Ms. Gandy wants the job is a total rumor to me; if she does, I can't say that the choice thrills me.

The choice of Gandy does not thrill me because she holds great power at N.O.W. (from the N.O.W. site: "Gandy also is president of the NOW Foundation, chair of NOW's Political Action Committees, and serves as the principal spokesperson for all three entities"; and I think she used that power to have N.O.W. sell women down the river when N.O.W. broke with its usual practice and made a general election presidential endorsement, picking Barack Obama, somebody who used and tolerated sexism and misogyny to gain the Democratic Party's nomination. I use the expression "sold women down the river" with all its metaphorical baggage: the image of humans being treated like chattel sold down to the Delta to be auctioned off. I think N.O.W. had very little evidence of Barack Obama's commitment to women's empowerment, little evidence of even his commitment to women's reproductive rights (the usual excuse used by mainstream women's groups to go out of their way to support his candidacy). And still, under the leadership of Gandy, N.O.W. went out of its way to auction off women's votes, encouraging them to turn out and make sure this man, who never once denounced the nutcrackers and the media comments and the misogynistic rappers singing him into office, became President of the United States of America.

On the other side of the ledger, Kim Gandy has clearly spent the better part of her life working on issues important to women; she's probably quite knowledgeable about working conditions for women and in a position to hire high quality staff. So Gandy is not a bad person and she's not anti-woman. But she made a Faustian bargain at high profile moment. The dynamics of the general election were such that women's votes really mattered. And lots of women were and still are furious at the Democratic Party for depriving Hillary Rodham Clinton of an equal opportunity to win the nomination at the Denver Convention by abiding by the Party's own rules and traditions. Under these circumstances, N.O.W. should have remained agnostic. As an organization that does not usually trade in presidential endorsements, refraining from making one would not have made news. Going out of its way to endorse Obama is what made news, and Gandy made that decision. In a year when every poll showed any generic Democrat beating John McCain and almost every poll consistently predicted Obama beating McCain, there really was no reason - even for those who believed that McCain would be a worse president for women than Obama - for women's organizations to line up behind Obama. The only reason to do so would be fear of reprisal if they did not; or if their leaders hoped for a seat within the administration after the election. N.O.W. and, if rumor is correct, Ms. Gandy acted for the latter reasons.

I believe that once a person shows a capacity for major betrayal - in public or private life - that person cannot be safely relied upon to act in a reasonably trustworthy way again. So I was not surprised that it turned out that Bill Richardson had apparently not been totally forthcoming with the Obama administration about the corruption charges against him back in New Mexico. If Richardson would deceive the Clintons to further his aims, why would he not do the same to Obama?

If Kim Gandy was willing to sell out women who expected really very little of her - just that she stick with usual practice and show organizational restraint in an election that was wracking many women with distress - I can easily predict that she will sell out women who expect harder things of her, such as real fighting for women's interests in an economy that is bad for everybody but worst for women.

That said, making a deal with the devil does not make Kim Gandy the devil. Of course neither does it make her another Mary Anderson, the first director of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor.

Mary Anderson (served 1920 - 1944)

The first "up from the ranks" labor woman to head an executive department of the Federal Government, Mary Anderson directed the Women's Bureau for nearly 25 years, leading efforts to win better wages, hours and working condition for women. She served for five presidents and, during her tenure, saw the ranks of women workers more than double.

- Women's Bureau, Director's Gallery

 

"As the world evolves, so too does the growing role of women who are proving their infinite capabilities in today's complex workplace, and exhibiting a new usefulness now and for the future."

from the Labor Hall of Fame citation inducting Mary Anderson

Also from that citation:

From a domestic worker to factory employee to trade union leader, Swedish-born Mary Anderson was a tireless champion of women in the workplace. Director of the Women's Bureau for a quarter century, she was the most influential of all women in Federal service. Her leadership in fact-finding and standards-setting established her as the Nation's foremost authority in the struggle for women's rights and the improvement of their lives and working conditions.

At the start of the 20th century the Women's Bureau was headed by a woman whose commitment to women's equal opportunity in the workplace transcended party politics. Why should we expect anything less from the Director appointed at the start of the 21st century?

(Excerpted at 51 Percent)

Wanted: domestic Cabinet Secretaries for Obama's executive branch

It turns out to to be tough for the executive branch to get much accomplished when the cabinet is riddled with vacancies.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered office in 1933, the country was in the midst of the Great Depression, which is generally dated as lasting from 1929 through the early 1940s. One commentator dates 1933, the year of Roosevelt's first Inauguration, as "the worst point in the depression, more than 15 million Americans—one-quarter of the nation’s workforce—were unemployed." Neither Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt's presidential predecessor nor the 1920s-earlier 1930s U.S. Congress had had any success in blunting the effects of the economic catastrophe, let alone getting at its causes.

Given this background, it is practically boring that the moment Roosevelt hit Washington, DC he arrived with domestic cabinet positions filled, and backups for at the ready for those who had to depart unexpectedly. Quite possibly because of his extensive experience in government, federal and state, Roosevelt realized that the executive is a branch of government, not a one-man operation - a multi-faceted wing of the government each part of which requires personpower and leadership. This all sounds obvious, I know.  Obvious, that is, until one realizes that as of February 7, 2009, the President who has taken office under economic circumstances that have been compared to those under which Roosevelt took office has still not filled three major domestic/economic cabinet positions: Labor, Commerce, and Health and Human Services. Furthermore, that President, Barack Obama, apparently had no backups in two cases, Bill Richardson and Tom Daschle where the nominees' problems were on the much vaunted transition team's radar, although apparently not high enough to attract the notice one might have expected.

FDR's first 100 days (which actually date from the time Congress convened after his inauguration) gained momentum from the very quick passage of a bill he had ready to send to Congress immediately,

When Congress met on March 9, F.D.R.’s Emergency Banking Act was introduced in the House with the ink still wet. There were no committee hearings, no debate, no amendments. The measure was whooped through with bipartisan support and no roll call. Most members had not read the bill, and took on faith what the leadership presented. Three hours later the bill passed the Senate (73-7), and an hour later Roosevelt added his signature. The entire legislative process, from the bill’s introduction in the House to the president’s signature, took less than six hours. (source)

The Emergency Banking Act of 1933 tackled one discrete part of the bleak economic situation, in two steps:

• Legalized President Roosevelt's decision to declare a national banking holiday.
• Permitted the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to appoint a conservator with powers of receivership over all national banks threatened with suspension.

It was not an omnibus  attempted cure-all. Perhaps this is why leadership from both parties could digest it  and rally their legislative troops around. When Roosevelt called Congress into Session, passing this Act was his only immediate objective. It was only because this Act passed so swiftly that Roosevelt was able to get more New Deal banking and finance legislation underway. Within the first 100 days, Roosevelt was able to act on the momentum garnered from the quick passage of the Banking Act. He sent numerous stimulus sand relief bills to Congress, going one category or problem at a time, which diminished opportunities for time-consuming logrolling and bickering.

But none of this could have been accomplished so quickly or effectively if Roosevelt had to do all the work of the executive branch alone. Although the number of cabinet positions in 1933 were fewer than today, Roosevelt had all his filled, by people who knew him well. Here is the starting line-up of those who filled domestic positions and were responsible for drafting and implementing the legislation of the first 100 days:

Secretary of the Interior
Harold L. Ickes (1933 - 1945)

Secretary of Commerce
Daniel C. Roper (1933 - 1938)

Secretary of the Treasury
William H. Woodin (1933 - 1933 [resigned due to illness]) • Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1934 - 1945)

Attorney General
Homer S. Cummings (1933 - 1939)

Secretary of Agriculture
Henry A. Wallace (1933 - 1940)

Secretary of Labor
Frances Perkins (1933 - 1945)

In 100 days, this group, working with Congress, accomplished more to restore Americans' confidence in the economy and the government than Herbert Hoover's administration had in the previous 4 years. Not that Hoover made NO effort. He put forth and signed into law one of the original trickle-down (to write anachronistically) pieces of economic fix-it legislation:

Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) Act of 1932

• Provided loans to banks, savings banks, building and loan associations, credit banks, industrial banks, mutual savings banks, and life insurance companies.
• Made loans to railroads, many of which could not meet their bonded indebtedness payments.

A liberal economist explains it all for us; and learn how the recession is going hit women harder than men

Read this. Listen to this.

Bad times are bad for all individuals. For individuals who constitute an oppressed majority - the women of this country - bad times will be worse.