The Cornell Chronicle, October 22, 2008, Wednesday

The Cornell Chronicle

October 22, 2008, Wednesday

The Cornell Chronicle

New York women's panel looks at financial crisis from a female perspective

By Amanda Angel

"In this period of economic downturn there's one area where [women] have achieved equality," said U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-14th Dist.) Oct. 20 at the Cornell Conference Center in New York City. "Job loss."

This punch line aroused a round of snickering from the overwhelmingly female crowd at a Cornell Institute for Women and Work event, "Women's Leadership and the Economic Crisis: Does Gender Matter?"

Maloney was the keynote speaker at the 11-person roundtable that culled experts from government, organized labor, academia, the media and finance. Francine Moccio, director of Cornell's Institute for Women and Work, started planning the event about a month ago after she felt coverage of the financial crisis neglected women's roles in it.

"It's not a race-, gender- and class-free crisis," said Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress, the union that represents more than 20,000 faculty and staff at the City University of New York. "It is constructed on the same lines of the existing divides within society."

Women have been particularly vulnerable during this economic downturn because of their marginalized economic status, the panelists said. They still earn on average 79 cents to every dollar earned by a man, Maloney pointed out, and they are less likely to hold leadership positions in business and government. Women were more likely to be hurt by the subprime mortgage crisis, having received a disproportionate share of the risky loans as compared with prime mortgages, she said. Single-parent households, the vast majority headed by single mothers, are at risk of falling below the poverty level during economic downturns.

"Women have a more intense experience of the economy," said Kathleen A. Frankovic, a member of the President's Council of Cornell Women, which co-sponsored the event with Cornell's ILR School. Frankovic, who works as director of surveys at CBS News, brought numbers from the latest New York Times/CBS News polls on the economy: 58 percent of women surveyed thought the economy was very bad compared with 41 percent of men, and 72 percent of women thought the economy would worsen compared with 61 percent of their male counterparts. However, women were also more hopeful that the U.S. government's bailout plan would work, she said.

Maloney, along with N.Y. Assemblywomen Catherine Nolan (D-37th Dist.) and Barbara Lifton (D-125th Dist.), expressed fear of the systematic rolling back of women's rights in the federal government. The United States never ratified the equal rights amendment for women, which came before Congress in the late 1970s. The United States isn't among the 185 nations to adopt the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, joining such nations as the Sudan, Iran and Somalia.

"Discrimination isn't as blatant as it was when I was young, but there's still subtle discrimination," Maloney said. The congresswoman signed copies of her recently published book, "Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated," about the stagnation of women's rights, prior to and following the discussion.

Maloney and Nolan also received awards from the Institute for Women and Work for their "outstanding service to working women and their families."

Another session on women's leadership and the economic crisis will feature Laura Anglin, director of budget operations for N.Y. Gov. David Paterson, Jan. 15, 6-8:30 p.m., at the Cornell Conference Center at 16 E. 34th St., New York City. Anyone interested in attending can e-mail Moccio at fam5@cornell.edu.

Amanda Angel '03 is a freelance writer in New York City.