Equal pay week raises awareness for gender inequality

For every dollar made by a man, a woman receives 80 cents.

Equal Pay Day was April 2, a day to increase awareness about the gender wage gap.

To raise awareness for this disparity, the Center of Gender Equity launched a week-long Equal Pay campaign, involving various clubs on campus. Between March 25 and April 4, events were hosted around campus to raise awareness for the gender gap, as well as educating people on how it affects the country as a whole.

Aly Duffin, ’20, project leader for the Center of Gender Equity and co-leader of the event, said the campaign’s biggest goal is to get people thinking.

“Just being aware of it is ideal because the students here are eventually being hired for jobs, and we want them to be aware of unconscious biases,” Duffin said. 

Brooke Glassman, ’19, event coordinator for the Society of Women Engineers club at Lehigh, agreed with Duffin.

She said equal pay is one of those topics that is simply not talked about enough.

“There has been such a push for raising awareness for women and equality, but it is one thing to hear the headline and another thing to promote it ourselves and to make our community aware of it,” Glassman said.

Events that took place included handing out cookies with coupons to items at Upper Court of 20 percent, 39 percent and 47 percent off. These percentages equate to the pay gap between a white man’s earnings compared to those of white women, black women and Latina women respectively. There were also lectures held on a variety of strategies that women can undertake to ensure they are receiving the benefits they deserve.

Hannah Lee, ’20, treasurer and secretary of Lehigh’s American Association of University Women chapter, described a seminar in which the speaker presented ways people can make sure they are negotiating a fair salary.

“The salary negotiation workshop teaches women to be more confident talking to their employers about how much they should be paid,” Lee said.

Glassman said as a senior, she is searching for jobs with a new awareness of how much she should advocate for herself in the future.

Lee said the recent push for more awareness stems from the lack of knowledge the general public has on what the pay gap actually is.

“It’s not necessarily two people working the same exact job and making different wages,” Lee said. “It comes from not having well-paid family leave programs and women being pushed into certain societal roles.” 

Duffin said there’s an occupational segregation, which happens when people are pigeonholed into certain jobs based on their race or identity.

“I am studying mechanical engineering with an IDEAS degree, and I barely knew about engineering until my junior year,” Duffin said. “Even then, none of my advisers were telling me to take engineer-heavy courses. They were advising me to take courses that were traditionally taken more by girls instead of what more closely suited my major.”

Glassman said she believes everyone should have their eyes and ears open to the pay gap because being aware of this phenomenon could affect anyone.  

“Even if you’re male, it can affect your daughter or mother or wife,” Glassman said.