Wednesday, November 16, 1933
Dally Nebraskan
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Wage discrimination must end
In 1 063, thl U.S. Congress passed the Equal Pay
Act In an attempt to bridge the gap between
salaries of men and women. At that time, 38 per
cent of all adult women were part of the paid
labor force, and they earned 69 cents to every
dollar earned by men, according to statistics
compiled by the Nebraska Commission on the
Status of Women.
& & Janet Ward
Today, 20 years later, more than half of all
adult women are part of the paid labor force, but
the earnings gap remains exactly the same 69
percent, the statistics show. To look at the pay
gap another way, consider the fact that working
women with college degrees earn less than men
who have an eighth-grade education.
What society is telling us, and what current
laws reinforce, is that jobs performed by women
are worth less than jobs performed by men.
Obviously, the laws which intended to protect
women from wagegender discrimination are, at
best, ineffective, and our attempts to make new
federal laws that better protect women have not
been ratified. Because of the dim outlook for fed
eral laws to protect women, we need to shift our
focus to our state lawmakers.
In Nebraska, statistics show that there are
thousands of women in the work force who are
earning wages that put them barely above pov
erty leveL In 1980, 62 percent of the women in
Nebraska had paid employment, however, 71
percent of those women were concentrated in the
lowest paying jobs: blue collar, clerical and sales.
Men in those same fields earned 65 percent more
than women, just by virture of the fact that they
were born male.
The tremendous need for fair wages is even
more evident when you consider that of the work
ing women in Nebraska, 45 percent are single
heads of households, and unfortunately only 19
percent of divorced fathers continue to pay alim
ony and child support three years after being
divorced, the statistics show. Those women are
doing their best to feed and clothe their growing
children, and to pay ever-rising bills.
You can do something to help an immeasurable
amount. LB531, currently in the Appropriations
Committee of the Nebraska Legislature, if passed,
will have a huge affect on discriminatory wage
settings. Its passing would mean that the doors
for a philosophy of fairness and equal opportun
ity could be opened. In order for LB5S1 to be
; heard and voted on by our Legislature, it must be ;
approved by five members of the Appropriations
Committee. At this time, only one more vote is
needed to get LB581 on the floor of the
.Legislature.'-,,-..,.;,..'...
You can help by writing in support of LB581 to
the five members of the Appropriations Commit
tee who have not cast their "yes" vote, and tell
them that you want to end the wage discrimina
tion American women have endured for decades.
The five senators who have not voted "yes" to
LB 581 are: Glen Goodrich, District 20, Omaha;
Don Wagner, District 41, Ord; Lowell Johnson,
District 15, North Bend; Howard Peterson, Dis
trict 35, Grand Island and Martin Kahle, District
37, Kearney. You can write these senators at the
state CapitoL -
' V2. -.
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November 16 & 17
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American Films
r. ir it. it.
Gity comparisons indicate
bigger is not always better
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In a relatively short period of time I
had to shuttle back and forth repeat
edly between two cities: New York and
Kansas City. Something struck me
about the two.
In New York most people I met were
cocky, even arrogant, about thejoys of
living in their city. They behaved as if
anyone who lived anywhere other
than Manhattan was one of life's unfor
tunates; that the wonders of New York
City were so obvious and so thrilling
that a grateful New York resident
should feel . obliged to proclaim his
good luck to anyone who would listen.
They all seemed like Frank Sinatra
singing "New York, New York."
reens
In Kansas City, on the other hand,
the people I met were almost apolo
getic about their town. They all said
they personally liked it, but in the next
breath they were confessing that "it's
not New York," or It's not Chicago."
The unspoken sentiment was that they
were somehow lacking because they
had wound up living in Kansas City.
And yet . . . anyone with any sense
could see within an hour of arrival in
either city that, as far as the pure plea
sure of living was concerned, Kansas
City was a far more logical choke for a
home. Where New York was filthy,
Kansas City was clean; where in New
York the mixture of people on the
streets included a startling hih per
centage of unsavory sorts, in Kansas
City the people on the streets were
clearly people a stranger could trust
In short, if an alien from another
planet were to land on Earth and to
touch down in New York and Kansas
City in succession, he would not have
to spend five minutes thinking about
which place any sane person would
choose for a home. He would probably
marvel at the fact that New York and
Kansas City were even part of the
same country, so obvious were the
advantages of Kansas City life.
But of course that's not how the two
cities are perceived. New York is seen
as desirable, as No. 1; Kansas City is
seen as the sticks, as not even qualify
ing as a hih runner-up in the nation's
chic sweepstakes. The "great" cities
are supposed to be New York and Chi
cago fcd Lcs Angeles; the ethers are
supposed to recognize implicitly that -
they are lacking. '
The city where I was born Colum
bus, Ohio has always had an infe
riority complex that traces back to
this way of thinking. I subscribe to the
. city's excellent magazine, .Columbus
Monthly; the latest issue features a
cover story titled: "Can Columbus Ever
BeGreatr
. In the story, writer Herb Cook Jr.
asks if Columbus is content to remain
a "Grade B city"; he writes: "It's no
secret that Columbus has an image
problem. When we look at ourselves in
the mirror, we see a stable, solid, rela
tively prosperous community, the pro
verbial 'good place to raise a family '
But when people from New York or
California look toward Columbus, too
often they see . . . nothing."
Well . . . maybe that is the general
perception about Columbus. I'm not
sure what's wrong with being a "stable,
solid, relatively prosperous commun
ity, the proverbial 'good place to raise a
family "; people who live in Columbus
may think that's an easy: thing to
accomplish, but people who live in
New York certainly can't say those
words about their city.
It's good, of course, for people not to
be satisfied with the status quo in the
towns where they live, and to strive for
improvements., But the way society
has been evolving for the last 20 years,
it seems foolish to ding to the old
'"bigger b better" thinking when rank
ing the quality of cities. .
But I Sew into Columbus recently,
and as I was walking through the air
port something happened that mads
me think anew about all cf this. ; ' ; ;
"Will, the person who dropped the
dollar bill in front cf the United Air
' lines ticket counter please come back
toci&imit?" ''; ',;"'"'; v ;,T;:t"
;A-smsll thing, but 'it stopped 'mel
Somehow I could not envision that
announcement being made at New
York's LaGuardia airport or Chicago's
Ollare. ' : --v
In Columbus, though, the announce
ment made sense. In a lot of ways
something like that is more important
than all the grand operas and network
headquarters and Broadway theaters .
in the world. After you've been to the
theater at night, or after you Ve been to
the Metropolitan Opera, you still have
to go home; in the grand scheme of
things, the going home should plsy at
least some part in whether a city b
considered . "great" ' , ' ; ; , "'
.' i::-3, Ttilea Cczzrj CzZz-ts,
ten Would You Grdo
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