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“What’s a Good Job… ‘For a Woman’?”The Latest
Friday Forum
Gina M. D'Andrea, First Year Women's Studies Teaching Assistant and Graduate Student
Holly Fechner speaks as Nancy Mills, Vicky
Lovell and Cynthia Deitch look on.
On Friday, December 6th,
the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) and the GW Women’s Studies
Program continued their series of Friday Forums, in which researchers,
advocates, program administrators, policy makers and students are brought
together for a brown bag lunch when they can hear some of the leading
researchers and workers in a specific field that is relevant to women and public
policy. This semester, the Friday
Forum was titled “What’s a Good Job… ‘For a Woman’?”
The featured speakers were Vicky Lovell, Study Director at IWPR; Nancy
Mills, Executive Director of the Working for America Institute; and Holly
Fechner, Chief Labor Council with Senator Edward Kennedy’s office.
Cynthia Deitch, Acting Director of Women’s Studies and Associate
Professor of Women’s Studies and Sociology, moderated the discussion.
About 40 people came out to attend the conference, despite the heavy
snowfall the day before. Lovell started off the
Forum with an overall look at job quality and the ways it is defined in our
society. Her comprehensive handout
to the audience included charts comparing job quality aspects, from living wages
to child care, across different industries, education levels, and regions of the
world. Next Mills spoke, discussing
how, in recent years, it has become more difficult for workers to organize, and
organized workers are a key to high quality jobs. It is their bargaining power that both gets them higher wages
and more benefits, and is so costly to their employers. Finally, Fechner gave the Forum a historical perspective,
discussing those aspects of older laws, such as the 1938 Fair Labor Standards
Act, which are still relevant today. Deitch
then moderated an extensive question and answer period, during which more
issues, such as valuing women’s work in the home, problems immigrant workers
face, welfare reform, and comparisons to European attitudes and policies toward
work, were discussed by the panelists and audience members.
Fechner, Mills, Lovell and Deitch at the Friday Forum on December 5, 2002. |
