Wage Gap Persists in 2006

New Government Data Show
No Progress in Closing the Gender Wage Gap


Washington, D.C. –
New information released today by the Institute for Women's Policy Research shows that the wage ratio between women and men failed to narrow in 2006 and that an earlier trend toward equal pay has stalled. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2006 the ratio of the annual averages of women's and men's median weekly earnings was 80.8 for full-time wage and salary workers, down slightly from 2005, when it was 81.0, compared with a 1993 level of 77.1. Women's usual weekly earnings were $600 in 2006, compared with $743 for men.

"Today's economy is letting women down," said Dr. Vicky Lovell, IWPR's Director of Employment and Work/Life Programs. "Despite women's rising educational achievement and strong work commitment, fair pay remains out of reach."

Another series of earnings data, median annual earnings, shows the same trend of a stalled gender wage ratio. The annual earnings ratio for full-time year- round workers in 2005 (the latest year for which data are available)-77.0-was very similar to that observed in 2001-76.3. Women earned an average of $31,858 in 2005, compared with men's $41,386. Real annual earnings have not increased for either women or men in recent years.

"Progress at closing the wage gap has come to a standstill in the past few years," noted Dr. Heidi Hartmann, President of the Institute for Women's Policy Research. "Any small progress observed is due to men's real wages falling faster than women's. The weak economic recovery since 2001 has frustrated women's efforts to close the gender wage gap."

To view the fact sheet, click here: Wage Ratio Fact Sheet

About Institute for Women's Policy Research
The Institute for Women's Policy Research conducts rigorous research and disseminates its findings to address the needs of women, promote public dialogue, and strengthen families, communities, and societies. IWPR focuses on issues of poverty and welfare, employment and earnings, work and family issues, health and safety, and women's civic and political participation.

Website: http://www.iwpr.org

Don't forget to breathe...

When did you last think about breathing? Was it an hour, a day, a week or months ago? Breath is one of the many physiological functions that we tend to overlook, since it is taken care of automatically. Thank God for that! If we had to think about every breath we take, not many of us would be around….

Unlike other automatic functions over which we have no control (e.g. the heart rate), it is easy to influence the rhythm and aspect of our breathing. Regulation of breath can greatly improve the quality of life.

Slow, full, deep breathing will increase overall energy and strengthen the nervous system as well as the immune system. Most important of all, it allows one to balance emotions and to develop a sense of presence and calmness.

How it works is easy to understand. When we are under stress, or feeling anxious or angry, the breathing becomes short, shallow and often irregular. As a consequence we no longer exhale all the way, and therefore don’t release all the carbon monoxide in our lungs. We then can’t fully inhale and the overall oxygen intake decreases. This in turn creates a feeling of oppression, a sense that we can’t breathe, which can easily become the beginning of an anxiety or panic attack.

Learning simple techniques, like deep abdominal breathing or alternate nostril breathing will not only oxygenate one’s body and brain for better health and performance, it can become a precious tool to regulate emotions like anxiety without the help of medication.


You can try it for yourself by following these instructions:

Deep abdominal breathing

1. Exhale all the air while gently pulling your abdomen in.
2. Inhale while expanding the abdomen. (Pushing the abdomen out as if the incoming air were taking an elevator down into the your tummy...)Gently bring the breath upwards, allowing the rib cage to expand, then continue bringing the breath up, thus expanding the chest.
3. Slowly exhale first from the chest, releasing the rib cage and then the abdomen.
4. Inhale into abdomen, then chest – exhale release chest, then abdomen, repeat….

BENEFITS:
Deep abdominal breathing reverses the stress reaction by providing more oxygenation to the blood, resulting in greater relaxation, better emotional balance and control, greater mental clarity and acuity, and improved general health. It activates the parasympathetic part of the involuntary nervous system, which allows the system to rest, relax and repair.

Like everything else in life, the quality of breathing will improve with practice and by the very fact that we are paying attention to its characteristics. A regular practice of breathing exercises will not only develop the physical and emotional benefits mentioned earlier. In addition it will foster present moment awareness, which is a key to living life with clarity, intention and balance. When we slow down enough to be in touch with our breathing, we also begin to notice all the beauty that gets lost when we keep frantically racing from one situation to the next

Marie-Lou Kuhne Millerick

In the Company of Women: Part One

Complementary Ways of Organizing to do Work
By Carlotta Tyler, m.s.o.d., Principal, odc

Struggling down the cellar stairs with a forty-pound laundry basket at the end of a long day in the 1970’s I said to myself “I wonder where the laundry would be located if a woman had designed this house?” This laundry epiphany prompted a later observation in graduate school, “How come there aren’t any women in these research populations defining leadership?” My next thought was “How would these organizations look if they were designed by women?” These questions illustrate the threshold of perception a woman crosses in recognizing the existence of a pervasive paradigm that does not include her. Once awakened, a casual scan of the nightly news will confirm the fact that the viewpoints of her half of the human population, are rarely included in the crucial debates and decisions currently being made on the global stage. It also explains why women often feel like being in alien territory at work.

Models are representations of key concepts and operating principles. When applied to organizations, they indicate what we pay attention to when we gather to do work. The predominant organizational models that we use today were historically designed by men, in the West by white men. As a consequence, they reflect male values and favor rewarding masculine behaviors. Remarkably, this fact has generally been overlooked in discussions of organizations. To seek answers these questions I spent the next two decades applying a gender lens to the structure and dynamics, the look and feel of organizations through sponsored research which I conducted from 1981 to 1997 with over 1500 women leading in public and private sector organizations on four continents . The forms of organizing studied were formal and informal, since women’s work transcends the standard definition of workplaces. The structures studied ranged from the predominating male-defined ones, through women-owned with mixed management, to women-only. It was in the latter group that the clearest manifestation of women’s unique modes of work emerged. The field study concentrated on twelve women-owned and women-only work structures. From the research findings and field applications in the context of an international consulting practice, I conclude that:

• Women’s ways of conceptualizing and organizing to do work are essentially different from men’s;.
• Those ways are complementary, not competitive. By combining the best of both men’s and women’s models an entirely new paradigm can be created, one that holds the promise of creating wholeness and balance for organizations struggling to adapt too the challenges of change;
• To transform traditional models will require examination of the core beliefs we bring to, and find reflected in, the design and operation of our organizations.

to be continued soon...