Mind the gap: Latinas and unequal pay

On June 10, 1963, the U.S. government passed an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act making it illegal to pay women less than men for the same work.

That was 50 years ago, and women are still paid less than men at all education levels, in almost every field. On average, women make 77 cents to every dollar a man makes per hour, translating to about $11,084 per year less than a man.

These are statistics that many of us know like the back of our hand. Since the implementation of this amendment, we have progressed 18 cents towards closing the wage gap, however that progress ended a decade ago. In the past ten years, women have earned a static 23 cents less than men per hour. These numbers continue to shock us as a very real and tangible example of why we need feminism.

However, what a lot of people are not familiar with is the way in which wages are segregated along race lines as much as gender. According to this report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Latinas are paid the least of any demographic, earning an average of $521 a week. That’s 54 cents for every dollar the average white man makes, and in California the numbers get worse, with Latinas earning 43.2 cents for every white man’s dollar. That’s thousands of dollars a year.

In addition to earning less than their male counterparts, Latinas are mostly found in our country’s lowest paying jobs, often in the informal sector where they are more likely to be exploited. If they are undocumented, these women can easily lose their jobs as a result of the Obama administration’s silent ICE raids.

Now, imagine trying to feed your kids with two minimum wage jobs, yet knowing that every day that by going to work, you risk being torn away from your family?

This is why Equal Rights Advocates (ERA) threw a luncheon last week, honoring those women struggling with unfair pay, celebrating the progress we have made in the past 50 years, and laying out the work still to be done. At the luncheon some incredible presenters spoke to their experience struggling for equal pay. Among them was Saru Jaramayan of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, an organization that fights for fair pay and better working conditions for restaurant workers in the United States.  Read More »

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Quote of the Day: Masturbating Fetuses

As Congress debates imposing a 20 week ban on abortion, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) urges banning the procedure at 15 or 16 weeks. Why, you ask? Because, simply put, fetuses like to jerk off. And how could we deny them of that god-given right? Burgess, who was also an OB/GYN said:

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful… They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

There is so much to unpack here. First of all, I’m kind of impressed a Republican from Texas would publicly approve of masturbation. I mean, some of them have campaigned against the sin. I would think the fact that a fetus masturbates would turn a conservative Republican into a pro-abortion fiend! I also appreciate that he specifies that it’s the male fetuses who engage in the activity. It’s certainly not very lady like for a female fetus to do it, which is probably why Burgess has only observed the males.

You can check out the video, posted by AmericaBlog.

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What should I #AskPelosi this weekend at Netroots Nation 2013?

via NetrootsNation.org

This weekend in San Jose, California, I have the privilege of representing for the Feministing crew in a lunchtime keynote session with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). We recently had an awesome Feministing Five with Pelosi, and knowing her reputation for candor, I expect nothing less than an awesome interview.

I’m taking your questions via Twitter using the hashtag #AskPelosi so please make sure to submit questions there before Wednesday, June 19th at 10pm  EST.

Read More »

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Quick Hit: Juanita Diaz-Cotto on women of color and the prison-industrial military complex

Check out this great interview with academic-activist Juanita Diaz-Cotto at Guernica.

Juanita Diaz-Cotto knows she’s seen as radical. The activist academic blurs the lines that often delineate two clear, if not antagonistic, camps: scholarship and social justice. An expert on Latina and Chicana women’s experiences in the U.S. prison system, she’s been one among just a precious few voices in academia calling attention to the devastation the criminal justice system wreaks on women of color.

Her work deals with a crisis hidden in plain sight. While Latinos made up just 16 percent of the total U.S. population in 2011, they were the majority of all those sentenced for federal offenses. Women of color, meanwhile, comprise the fastest-growing sector of the prison population—a growth that has been driven largely by the War on Drugs. In the last twenty years the number of women behind bars has increased at a rate almost double that of men, with Latinas and black women being sentenced at 1.6 and three times the rate of white women, respectively. And yet, Diaz-Cotto maintains, most people, academics included, tend to ignore these realities “because everyone is caught up in this black and white thing. This country is used to thinking in terms of binaries.”

It’s with that pressing reality in mind that Diaz-Cotto has pushed forward the academic discourse on exactly how law enforcement disproportionately criminalizes women of color. A professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Diaz-Cotto’s approach is community centered, transnational, and aggressively multilayered in its attempt to reckon with how different social forces intersect to produce injustice. “There are relationships of power and oppression that are identified with all those different identities,” she says. “So when you’re looking at structures of power you need to understand how identities, race, class and gender work together.” Her 2006 book, Chicana Lives and Criminal Justice: Voices from El Barrio, draws on the accounts of women who had been jailed, often repeatedly, for nonviolent drug-related crimes. It has widely been recognized as the first comprehensive study of Chicana women’s subjective experiences in the prison system—or the prison-industrial military complex, as she calls it. It’s for her subjects that she writes. “My priority is to document the communities so they can seem themselves reflected in there,” she says. “I’m writing for the people that I’m interviewing.”

Click here to read the interview, which covers the War on Drugs, growing up in a large Latino family, and Diaz-Cotto’s vision for a truly just and equitable society. She also offers a concise and powerful articulation of the need for an intersectional analysis: “[Y]ou need to understand how those identities—how race, class, and gender—work together to produce different relations of power. Because you want a theory that expresses oppression, ideally for as many people as you can.” It’s clear that her work–which refuses to fall into simplistic binaries–lives up to that goal.

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Conservative says women in military make up rape stories for money

derbThose of us concerned about the sexual assault epidemic ravaging the military can all the chill out, thanks to some really awesome news: women who join the military are pathological freaks who make up stories about being raped out of spite, for money or for attention. This, at least, is the opinion of esteemed (by fellow homophobic-racist- misogynists) “journalist” John Derbyshire. If that name sounds familiar, you’re either a FHRM (fellow homophobic-racist-misogynist) or you remember when Derbyshire urged white parents to follow his lead and have that really important, life-saving talk with their children about the birds and the bees the blacks. He advised his own children to, among other racist tricks, “(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally,” “(10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods,” “If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date.” This got him fired from The National Review.

Luckily for him, and us, Taki’s Magazine, which describes itself as “a Libertarian webzine” and calls itself by the affectionate nickname “Takimag,” welcomed Drebyshire with open arms and he joined the ranks of FHRM columnists like Pat Buchanan. In an article for his cleverly named “Derbtown” column, called “The Sexual Harassment Panic” (I love it already), “the Derb” (if you will, and I hope you will) explains that he’s just here to help: “My work here aims to be constructive: to apprise the US military of some true facts that might assist them in pushing back against the USC tsunami.” He then lays out his points with the same organization and clarity he did in his article on the blacks. I paraphrase but also include his original language to demonstrate the importance of his argument, the precision of his language, and the shocking fact that I’m not exaggerating or distorting his screed. But perhaps my greatest motivation for pasting screenshots instead of linking to the article is this plea that appears when I copy and paste the text:

“Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki’s Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don’t get paid for their work.”

So, in italics, I present my translation of “The Derb” and below each translation is a screenshot from his article.

1. What do you expect to happen when you mix the sexes? This is why women shouldn’t be in the army, and integration will be the ruin of civilization. I also cannot concentrate when any women are around, because I’m a pathological horndog.

Screen Shot 2013-06-17 at 9.03.28 PM

2. When men outnumber ladies they can’t control themselves. It’s hard for them and they suffer all sorts of feelings. They can’t get anything done. I know because I’m a pathological horndog.

Screen Shot 2013-06-17 at 9.03.37 PM

 

3. Powerful men make women horny. Men know this and unless they relieve themselves suffer extreme blue balls. I am in pain as I write this. Read More »

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