Women's Equality - Women's Lives

March 8 is International Women's Day. The fact that it's just one day should give you a clue about the status of women in the US and internationally.

The information below was provided by the National Council for Research on Women, (www.ncrw.org) and the Girls, Women & Media Project (www.mediaandwomen.org).

• Missing inaction: the Bush administration continues to engage in a pattern of omission, distortion, and spin when it comes to information about women and girls. (Is anyone surprised?) Data on the Department of Labor website has gone missing and the FDA continues to block approval of Emergency Contraception despite research findings that support its use.
  
• Buddy can you spare a dime: Women earn only 77 cents to every dollar earned by men. (Former MA democratic Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy is doin great things to shake this up…check out www.womenaregettingeven.org) Are 1 million women against WalMart be hallucinating? I doubt it!
  
• It's not rocket science: Despite substantial gains in the number of women pursuing graduate degrees in the sciences, women are still massively underrepresented. Women currently earn only 20% of all PhDs in computer science, less than 27% in physics, and only 17% in engineering.
  
• Ivy league discrimination: There are too few female tenured professors. Despite the fact that women have been at least half of all college undergraduates since 1978, women represent only 36% of all tenured faculty nationwide, and only 13% of doctoral granting universities boast women presidents.
  
• A seat at the table: Women are underrepresented in corporate leadership. Women have made up more than 40% of the workforce since 1977, and are currently almost 50%, yet only 9 women are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
  
• Courting discrimination: Too few women lawyers make partner. Women have been 40% of all law school students since 1995, and over half since 2001, but are only 15% of partners in law firms nationwide.
  
• And that's the way it is: Men dominate the airwaves, music industry, and film industry. Women comprise only 11% of the Sunday morning political talk show experts. No major record label is headed by a woman. Most major film studios are headed by men, and nine out of ten music videos are produced by men. Women direct only 5 - 7 % of major Hollywood films.
  
• Absolute poverty: Women constitute about 70% of the world’s absolute poor – those living on less than a dollar a day. In the United States in 2004, there were 20.1 million women living below the poverty level. Worldwide, women’s access to resources and education still lags behind men and boys.
  
• SOLD: Estimates range from 800,000 to nearly 4 million people trafficked (bought and sold as property) every year. The majority are women and girls.

You know my mantra ... don't agonize, organize!