The University of Mississippi Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Women issued a proclamation designating Tuesday as Equal Pay Day to recognize the full value of women’s skills and significant contributions to the labor force.
“Fair pay strengthens the security of families today and eases future retirement costs, while enhancing the American economy,” the proclamation stated.
“Without any undue costs or hardship, fair pay policies are simple to implement in both the public and private sectors,” said RoSusan D. Bartee, the commission’s chair and associate professor of educational leadership. “Wearing red today symbolizes the time wages paid to American women catch up to wages paid to men.”
To illustrate the gap between men’s and women’s wages, the proclamation included a U.S. Census Bureau statistic indicating that working women earned nearly a quarter less in 2008 than their male counterparts.
Despite national figures, the wage gap between men and women at UM is more well-balanced today, but university administrators must remain diligent in monitoring gender pay equity on an ongoing basis, said Jim Morrison, director of strategic planning, who co-chaired a 2009 task force studying gender pay equity.
The gender gap in wages is also the subject of a free, public lecture on Thursday titled “Gender Gap in Retirement Wealth.”
Yunhee Chang, UM assistant professor of family and consumer sciences, delivers the address at noon in the Faulkner Room the Archives & Special Collections on the third floor of the J.D. Williams Library.
A former Fulbright Fellow, Chang plans to examine evidence of gender-patterned wealth distribution and discusses the roles of risk tolerance, marital history and child support in determining women’s ability to accumulate wealth. At UM since 2004, Chang specializes in studying welfare and poverty, consumer finance and economic demography.
The Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Women, local chapter of the American Association for University Women and the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies are co-sponsors of Equal Pay Day. Chang’s lecture is the last in the Isom Center’s spring Brown Bag Lunch series.
For more information or for assistance related to a disability, contact Elizabeth Feder Hosey at 228-324-6038 or at cefeder@olemiss.edu.