Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET by MARGARET DICKSON THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET Back to the Future I came of age in the fi rst generation of American women who thought we could do anything, that there were no locks on the doors open to us or limits to what we could achieve with our God-given abilities. We were probably the fi rst generation of women in all of history to set forth under that perception. Of the women I grew up with and other contemporaries whom I met and became friends with along the way, several became physicians, even more became lawyers and others found professional distinction in other fi elds. A college chum is a nationally noted interior designer. Another spent her spent her career as a ranking administrator in the JFK School of Government at Harvard. Still more have satisfying and rewarding careers in business and in the public sector. Almost all of them have balanced their considerable professional obligations with the rigors and challenges of family life, and, at this stage of life, have pretty much weathered those storms. In fairness, a number of my life-long friends did take the road travelled by many of our mothers and grandmothers and devoted themselves to family and community life, which is an honorable choice. My point is, though, that my generation was the fi rst in which great numbers of American women actually had options, the fi rst in which we could decide what direction we wanted our lives to take and pursue it. That is surely why my heart sank when I read a recent story from the Philadelphia Inquirer. centers across the country. My physician grandfather who practiced in Fayetteville two generations ago would surely be bowled over to learn that women now make up nearly half the students in our nation's medical schools, but he probably would not be surprised to know that they make up only 13 percent of department heads and deans in academic medicine. Each physician would have her own reasons for declining to go after those prestigious positions, but I feel comfortable saying that family responsibilities play a role for many. So why, after decades of advancement for women in all fi elds and after enacting laws at all levels against wage discrimination, is this still going on? Early in my broadcasting career, it was common — if not exactly fair or legal — for employers to say things like this. "Given the choice between hiring an equally qualifi ed man or an equally qualifi ed woman, I would hire the man, because he has a family to support. The woman is probably a second income. Well! Oink! Oink! A study by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that on average, women physicians make about $33,000 less than men physicians with comparable training and experience. The writer, Allyn Gaestel, tells the story of a woman surgeon accomplished enough to become chief of surgery at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. Dr. Jo Buyske found out during her salary negotiations that her predecessor in the post was making $125,000 more than she was offered, and a male colleague in a comparable position made $150,000 more. Lest it appear that this is a discrepancy peculiar to the Philadelphia medical community, a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that on average, women physicians make about $33,000 less than men physicians with comparable training and experience. That is a year's earnings for many Americans in our struggling economy and nothing to sneeze at even for upper income earners. What is equally, if not more alarming, is that the number of women physicians begins to decline as they climb the ranks of academic medicine in major medical families, and millions are bringing home the bacon totally alone. Most of us agree that equal pay — not just the 71 cents the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says women physicians earn for every dollar earned by male physicians — is fair, not to mention the law. All I can think of is if this is happening to highly educated and skilled physicians, what on earth is going on in less exalted American workplaces? It reminds me that we have indeed come a long way, baby, but there is still a long way to go. MARGARET DICKSON, Con- tributing Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. I do not think for a second that many of today's employers hang on to that sentiment, and even fewer would say it out loud. It is instead more likely to be a long held prejudice, so deeply rooted that the employer, man or woman, may not even recognize it. Stephanie Abbuhl, vice chairwoman of emergency medicine at Penn and head of its program to advance women, agrees. Says Abbuhl, employers "are not sitting there thinking 'Jane Smith doesn't deserve to make what Bob Smith makes.' It's because of unconscious bias." Women are increasingly the primary breadwinners in American SPRING INTO SUMMER $ 99Special 6 UCW AUGUST 1-7, 2012 www.LittleMiracles4D.com Arssrpvrhqrvvtphyy( to Grow Your Business www.upandcomingweekly.com Advertising #'# %! qh WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Actual Image From the Womb.