Women's Biography, Emotional Healing, Personal Growth, Human Resources, Business Biography, Women's Biography, Discrimination & Prejudice

Getting Even

Name: Getting Even
Author: Evelyn Murphy
ISBN: 9780743254663

by Murphy, Evelyn, Graff, E. J.

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Overview

A WORKING WOMAN EARNS 77 CENTS FOR EVERY MALE DOLLAR.

In the twenty-first century, the gender wage gap still affects the daily life of women throughout the country, at every economic level, from cashier to CEO. Is it fair? No. Can it be stopped? Absolutely.

In this intelligently argued and carefully researched book, Evelyn Murphy, Ph.D., examines how much women (and their families) lose over a lifetime to the wage gap, knocks down the myth that women "choose" to make less, and documents the widespread discrimination that's holding down women's pay.

But here's the good news: The wage gap can be closed. Having served as an economist, politician, public official, and corporate officer, Murphy has a 360-degree view of the problem — and of the solution. Read this book — and get even.

About the Author, Evelyn Murphy

Evelyn Murphy was the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts from 1987 to 1991. She was the first woman in the state's history to hold statewide office. She has been an executive vice president of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Massachusetts and is a corporate director of SBLI USA Mutual Life Insurance Bank of America. She is the founder and president of the WAGE (Women Are Getting Even) Project Inc., which is dedicated to closing the wage gap in every American workplace.

E.J. Graff, a senior researcher at the Brandeis Institute for Investigative Journalism, is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and has written for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Salon.com.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

More than 40 years after the Civil Rights Act prohibited gender bias in the workplace, women are still earning almost 25% less than comparably employed men. For Murphy, the reason why is obvious: persistent unintentional, and sometimes even intentional, discrimination. "Today's conventional wisdom about what causes the gender wage gap ignores anything that happens behind employers' doors," Murphy, who has a doctorate in economics and is a former lieutenant governor of Minnesota, points out. To open those doors, she examined scores of recent lawsuits, which provided her with more than 200 pages worth of stories and statistics guaranteed to convince even the most satisfied working woman that on-the-job discrimination is "still with us, and it's not going away on its own." Murphy, with the help of Graff, a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, analyzes five types of discrimination-"blatant sex discrimination, sexual harassment, workplace sex segregation, everyday discrimination and discrimination against mothers"-and calculates that, over a lifetime, each working woman loses between $700,000 and $2 million because of them-that means less money for bills, homes, investments and retirement plans. As an antidote, the book's last third offers detailed case studies of MIT, Mitsubishi and the state of Minnesota, working sites that, under pressure, implemented large-scale changes to address inequities. Murphy gives readers the tools and the inspiration they'll need to tackle individual discrimination issues without necessarily going to court, but her goal is obviously larger than that. As the president of the WAGE Project, she aims to rile the public at large into action so that the wage gap can be closed, for good, in the next 10 years. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

President of the Women Are Getting Even (WAGE) Project and former lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Murphy joins with journalist Graff (What Is Marriage For?: The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution) to write a well-researched and motivating volume on the persistent gender-based wage gap in America today. This informative book serves as a call-to-arms for anyone who cares about gender equality, particularly its financial costs. The book is divided into three parts, first explaining the wage gap; then documenting recent instances of the wage gap (which is present at every level of employment), using legal and anecdotal evidence; and then offering suggestions for closing the gap on the personal, local, and national levels. Murphy and Graff have clearly done their homework; the book is chock-full of legal statistics, financial computations, and heart-wrenching stories. The writing itself is infused with a passion to motivate awareness and change. Readers will likely feel righteous anger about the fate of working women after reading this masterly work. Highly recommended for all public and academic libraries.-Erica L. Foley, Flint P.L. MI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.