The AAUW-Illinois convention was a great event! The meeting rooms, a/v, and food service at the Embassy Suites were just right. The speakers were top-notch.
AAUW CEO Gloria Blackwell provided an update on AAUW’s national efforts for equity for women and girls – economic security, safety and welfare. AAUW-IL lobbyist Jenni Purdue provided an update about our state public policy efforts.
Sharmili Majmudar, executive v.p. at Women Employed. WE advocates for women’s economic power to close the wealth gap for gender and race. Barriers to equity include salary history, forbidding employees to discuss their pay, limiting equal pay to precisely equal requirements (rather than similar requirements—because employers just change a phrase and say, no, the jobs are not equal).
Did
you know that the wealth gap begins with allowances? Boys’ chores are more frequently manual labor
– mowing lawns, shoveling snow, taking out the trash. Girls’ chores are more frequently domestic
and caregiving—dishwashing, baby-sitting.
Monetarily caregiving has less value.
"Changemakers!” was a panel of three young women leaders moderated by Dr. Jennifer Robin, professor of management at Bradley. The panelists were IL Rep. Nabeela Sayed, youngest Muslim woman elected to the Illinois House of Representatives; Crystal Owney, financial professional and AAUW Selected Professions Fellow; and Emily Glimco, a communications specialist for local government.
plenty of food for thought...lovely quilt and lucky winner!
ReplyDeleteYou have shared a great amount of info in your short descriptions. I'm happy to hear that diversity is still sought in your area. It drives me crazy that some states are trying to move our country backward. Congrats on finishing your service to the group as Membership VP. And also congrats on earning the group a nice hunk of money for the Greatest Needs Fund. Sounds like a great event all around.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the convention attendees were given much to think about.
ReplyDeleteThis is all so interesting. What does "AAUW" stand for -- I'm not familiar with this organization?
ReplyDeleteOne more thought popped into my head -- my teenaged sons have told me about a few of their female classmates who have found their own way out of the "pink collar chores" problem in an entrepreneurial way. They have established themselves as "lifestyle/beauty influencers" on social media and are making significantly more $ doing this than any boy ever made mowing lawns. I'm a little fuzzy on how it all works, but it seems like there are revenue streams available to social media content creators once they pass a certain threshold of how many followers or views their content has on sites like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc, and then they earn revenue from the ads that play at the beginning of their makeup tutorial on YouTube or commissions through affiliate links of particular products they recommend. Of course the whole Body Project/Beauty Goal thing is problematic from a feminist perspective, but it's interesting to see how individual young women with ambition and drive take a look at the world as it exists today and find their own pathway to financial independence and the freedom that comes with it instead of just accepting those babysitting jobs for $5/hr and hoping to find a boyfriend or a husband who can buy them things that they can't afford on their own.
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