Role of women examined in on-campus events

Rockefeller Foundation, Buchanan speak on issues

April 1, 2009
By Armando Vega
Staff writer

To cap off Women’s History Month, UIS was host to two events broadly discussing feminism and women in general.  A panel titled “The Role of Women in 2009” took place on March 24, which was followed by a presentation from Bay Buchanan entitled “How Modern Feminism Undermines American Values,” sponsored by The Society of Conservative Students, on March 25.

The "Role of Women" panel represented the Rockefeller Foundation’s Next Generation Leadership Foundation, which aims to bring together professionals of different backgrounds in order to discuss how best to strengthen American democracy, and was co-sponsored by the Barat Education Foundation and UIS’ ECCE Speaker Series program.

Sonya Lopez, Director of the First Generation College Students at Texas State University; Hilary Morgan, Director of Homeward Bound (which provides assistance for the homeless); and Arlene Mayzel, Vice President and Dean of Degree Programs at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management provided opening dialogue, primarily on the issue of women’s place in the workforce today.  The panel was moderated by Robert Kallen, currently a visiting professor of economics at DePaul and head of RSK Strategies, LLC.

Mayzel opened the discussion, relating to the audience how at the start of her career as a college professor, she had found to her dismay that a male colleague professor had been receiving much greater compensation than she was, despite doing similar work and generally being less involved on campus than she.  When brought up to the Dean, he remarked, “Well, you know, he has a family to support.”  She left shortly thereafter.

Indeed, according to some startling statistics released for 2008 by the Chicago Network, a group representing among the most successful women in the Chicago-land area today, the percentage of female top earners amongst the 50 largest publicly reporting companies in Chicago (the population of the group’s study) dipped to six percent.  Only a little over one-half of a tenth of all top earners at these companies are women.  70 percent of the Chicago 50 have no women top earners among their ranks at all.  Though not as severe, the disparity in women’s representation among the board of directors and executive offices of these companies is also problematic, with women representing only about 15 percent of this workforce.

One elucidating experiment put forth by Kallen concerned distributing questionnaires to a group of women and men, within the classroom for example.  With the same job description, 95 percent of the time women will ask for lower desired starting salaries than men.  Rather than erring on the side of shooting too high, which could potentially estrange applicants from employers, Mayzel recommends women gather as much input as they can on what such a position should start at, given one’s level of experience and education.

The chance to listen to a discussion on feminism from a conservative’s point of view was available on March 25.  Bay Buchanan, a noted political commentator on TV and former U.S. Treasurer under Ronald Reagan (and sister to 3-time Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, whose campaigns she managed) made her case that the modern feminism of today’s era represented a pendulum swung too far to the left, ultimately hurting women’s interests.  While lauding many of the victories of the feminist movement, she felt that feminists today were doing a disservice to women when they pretended that there existed no differences between men and women.

Her arguments against today’s feminism centered on the impact the movement has had in particular with regard to abortion, marriage and children, and moral standards.

“I’ll talk to women who have had abortions,” she would state emphatically.  “One woman in particular, she can’t walk by a park without looking and thinking to herself, ‘That’s about how old my son would have been, nine.  I wonder what he would have looked like now.’"

She lamented how so many women postpone marriage and children until after they feel they’ve sufficiently advanced in their careers, often only to miss out on something far more ultimately fulfilling.

“It’s impossible to discuss any agenda concerning women without also mentioning the impact it has on children,” she continued.  “We’re the front lines for these little guys.”

She noted in particular what she referred to as the unfortunate “vulgarity” displayed by many young women and the abandonment of the chaste ideal.

“Yes, there was a double standard.  You know, the men would be like alley cats, what do you call it, ‘sowing their oats,’ and of course if a woman slept around she’d be called the most atrocious things.  But rather than demand that men come up to our level, we stooped down to theirs,” she said, lamenting the development in the relations between the sexes.
Both events were held in Brooken’s Auditorium to full houses.