OPINIONS

Tuesday, March 8, 2022 OpiniOns

EMPOWERING WOMEN

Alexandra Garner, Executive Opinions Editor Hope Moses, Assistant Opinions Editor Editor’s Note: The stories in this edition focus on women’s issues in honor of International Women’s Day.

Allyship with women calls for active engagement

Being an ally to women at Marquette University requires more than a verbal commitment during Women’s History Month. Allyship requires a constant dedication to listening, uplifting and supporting women on campus every day.

Recognizing the inequities that women experience on campus, in workplace environments, through interactions with other students, faculty and staff is important, regardless of if they are subtle or clear.

In some classrooms where the majority of students are men, women may be talked over, cut off or “mansplained” to by their peers or professors. Women may be seen as less intelligent and overlooked by men in male-dominated fields, such as STEM. In co-ed student organizations, female leaders may be ignored by their male counterparts. Among students, women may be scrutinized for their appearances, actions, viewpoints and words. Women may be judged for wearing certain types of clothing, sharing their opinions in class discussions and even exercising at the gym.

In every aspect of campus life, stigmas against women can be intentionally or unintentionally perpetuated. It’s important to keep in mind that the experience of women on campus is not singular.

At a predominantly white institution, the experience for women, specifically women of color, can be drastically different.

While Marquette was founded in 1881, women were not admitted to undergraduate programs until 1909.

However, the first Black woman to graduate from Marquette was Mabel Watson Raimey. Raimey was not only the first Black woman to earn a law degree from Marquette and be admitted to the Wisconsin Bar in 1927 but she was also the first Black woman to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

According to the Office of Institutional Research and Analysis, there are 1,295 students of color who identify as female compared to 2,909 white students who identify as female, as of fall 2021. For students of color who identify as male, there are only 925 compared to 2,303 white students who identify as male.

The challenges that women of color on campus face are exacerbated, as they have to navigate campus life as women and people of color. Allies need to make efforts to not only amplify women of color’s voices but also to listen to their stories.

This also requires uplifting women who identify as transgender and/or transfeminine. Transgender and transfeminine women have often been excluded from conversations and activism involving women’s rights and equality.

The responsibility to create safer and more equitable spaces for women doesn’t just fall on men. Women supporting women is also crucial. Cisgender white women, who have largely been the first group to experience the benefits of gender equality progress before other marginalized groups of women, need to create more inclusive environments. In a world where cis men are largely in positions of power, men need to reflect on ways they can create spaces for women. HeforShe, a United Nations solidarity movement focused on gender equality, shared that men can be better allies by not sharing sexist content or hate speech, being a bystander to violence against women and communicating with women in their lives about ways they can act in solidarity.

Additionally, cis white women need to take an intersectional approach to the feminism movement. Excluding women of color and women who identify as transgender is inequitable, wrong and anti-feminist. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles who coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989, explained in a 2020 “Time” interview that intersectional feminism is a “prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other.”

Using an intersectional lens to focus on women’s issues involves understanding that other aspects of a women’s identity can create opportunities or challenges; these can include race, sexual orientation, class, religion and physical ability. Allyship requires active engagement in conversations about the struggles that women on campus face. Addressing inequities calls for reflecting on ways that you’ve contributed to gender inequality and ways moving forward that you can disrupt the status quo.

The editorial was crafted with leadership by the executive opinions editor. The executive board consists of the executive director of the Wire, managing editor of the Marquette Tribune, managing editor of the Marquette Journal, general manager of MUTV, general manager of MUR and ten additional top editors across the organization.

While having a baby can bring joy to many families, discussions about maternal health, especially Black maternal health, often fall out of focus due to persisting racism in health care.

The average pregnancy related mortality rate in the United States is 17.2 deaths per 1000,000 births across all races, according to the American Journal of Managed Care. However, the average pregnancy related mortality rate is the highest for Black women at 43.5 deaths per 100,000 live births.The infant mortality rate is also higher among Black infants than white infants; Black infants have 2.3 times the mortality rate of white infants. These differences in mortality rates across Black and white mothers and children can point to systemic racism and lack of care for Black patients that continues in medical fields. One reason is that Black patients may be seen as undervalued and not given the same attention and care as white patients and their health complaints are turned away. This could be because of implicit biases among medical staff.

Health care providers need to reflect and recognize where their implicit biases are discriminately influencing the care they give to different patients.

Celebrities aren’t any exception. For example, protennis athlete Serena Williams said in an interview with CNN that her complaints of feeling pain and shortness of breath during her recovery were dismissed by the medical staff shortly after her emergency C-section. This led to her developing a pulmonary embolism, where a blood clot from the legs can get dislodged and get into the lungs. Williams had reported having a history of blood clots. Due to the delay in receiving adequate treatment and lacking close monitoring, Williams ended up in the operating room once more to treat her pulmonary embolism along with other complications.

Similarly, Olympic athlete Allyson Felix said that she almost lost her life as well as her baby’s life due to complications of preeclampsia, in which someone’s blood pressure rises to dangerous levels in pregnancy and the urine becomes filled with protein and can become toxic.

Felix said in an interview with ESPN that she found she had severe preeclampsia much later in her pregnancy, around 32 weeks, which led to her daughter being born several weeks early. Typically preeclampsia is diagnosed around week 20.

Black mothers deserve the same attention and care as their white counterparts.

Another factor that can increase risks for higher maternal mortality rate is poverty. Black women are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as white women. According to the National Partnership for Women & Children, a Black woman who works full-time and year round typically makes 62 cents to every dollar a white woman makes.

Additionally, the experience of being a Black woman in the United States, in which structures of racial inequality continue to persist, is largely tied to higher maternal and infant mortality rates. Dealing with the day-today challenges of racism in the U.S. can biologically alter the stress levels in Black mothers over time and can create a kind of “weathering” effect on the body. These high, long-term levels of stress can also lead to high blood pressure and preeclampsia in Black mothers, which can lead to higher rates of maternal and infant mortality.

This is horrifying. Racism in the U.S. is truly killing Black mothers and babies.

Black women not only have to deal with the challenges of racism in their day-to-day lives, such as interpersonal and structural racism, but they also have to deal with discrimination by health care workers.

We need to address the trend in high maternal mortality rates among Black women and how it ties into racism.

We need to advocate for a change in the health care system by making all the resources available and accessible to everyone. Health care providers need to understand their racial bias when providing care. More importantly, we can be a voice for Black mothers to ensure that they get the same care as anyone else.

Black mothers, infants deserve better

Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss: the holy trinity insult exemplifying the sexism that women in power receive as they take on leadership in the workforce.

The meme “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” rose in popularity during Jan. 2021 as a response to feminist attitudes in the workplace, parodying the “live, laugh, love” saying. This meme invalidates the work that women put into their work life and devalues their contribution to the corporate world.

Women’s work lifestyle is not as respected or valued as men’s are through lack of representation, the toxicity of the girlboss movement and the exclusion that pits women against women.

Currently, women have very little representation in corporate leadership. According to the Pew Research Center, just 5.4% of women are CEOs in Fortune 500 companies in 2017. This number does not represent the number of women in the workforce though, as 56.1% of the female population aged 16 and over engaged in the workforce during 2021.

Girlboss is a phrase used by workplace feminists to describe their “hustle” culture entailing long work hours that allow them to rise up into leadership roles, like CEOs and presidents of companies.

In order to be viewed as a productive employee, “hustle culture” calls for more than just the average 9-5 workday; Work becomes the employee’s life, as they log hours after they are supposed to be off the clock. This culture falsely gives the notion that if a person works harder, they will become more valuable.

The implications of a nonexistent work-life balance that hustle culture presents can certainly be scrutinized, but within our society, men’s commitment to the hustle is taken seriously and praised. The same cannot be said for women.

Hustle culture becomes an exceptionally complicated conversation when gender is involved. For a woman to put in extra work hours to try and break through a system pitted against her is inspiring, but the toxicity prevails more often than not.

Sophia Amoruso, the founder of online, fast-fashion brand “Nasty Gal,” is the epitome of a girlboss. She released a memoir in 2014 titled “#Girlboss,” detailing her experience within the corporate world through a feminist perspective. Amoruso lives and breathes hustle culture and explains the tribulations she faced within the industry which was quickly shared in a 2017 Netflix series named after Amoruso’s memoir.

Despite this uplifting story about a girl turning an eBay store into a fashion empire, her former employees have detailed the negative work environment within “Nasty Gal.” Early Glassdoor reviews detail that the employees suffered from a lack of leadership within the company. In June 2020, Amoruso stepped down from the role of CEO due to COVID-19 related reasons.

Girlboss culture is also plagued by exclusion. White feminism is a type of feminism that fights only for the rights of white, liberal, cisgender women instead of adopting an intersectional lens. The intersectional feminist fights for all races and abilities, while white feminism applies to just a select group of people.

Racism and sexism are both painfully apparent in the workforce. Women of color represent only a marginal fraction of the workforce. Currently, only 4% of women of color have executive-level managerial, whereas white women make up 20%. White women are also more likely to be promoted than women of color. These instances cannot be boiled down to women not working as hard as men. When trends show that there is a disproportionate rate of success among a certain group of people, there is a larger problem of exclusion that must be addressed.

Hatred of the girlboss phenomenon is a reflection of how the girlboss has failed us. Money and success are the

Graphic by Kendal Bell

Women in business shouldn’t have to adopt “hustle” mentalities to survive. desired outcomes for reaching these leadership positions. While money is a significant predictor of success in our capitalistic system, we have conflated money with a feminist lens that has only perpetuated the problem. Money, a driving factor in greed, has been seen as a way to gain equality.

Women and their work must be recognized as influential in our society. Not only do women complete jobs well, but they also look to provide support for employee wellbeing. Sixty-one percent of female managers check on their employee’s emotional well-being, compared to 54% of male managers. Women are also more likely to check and make sure the workload is manageable for the employees.

The girlboss meme is a broader picture of internalized misogyny that our society perpetuates. Instead of joking about it and trying to laugh off the problems that our society faces, we must value the work all women do.

Laura Niezgoda is a sophomore studying communication studies and criminology and law studies. She can be reached at

laura.niezgoda@marquette.edu

U.S. women’s soccer team achieves long awaited victory

Women should not have to work so hard to be seen as equal.

Feb. 22 marked the day of a big win for women in soccer. The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team finally reached a settlement in their class action equal pay lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. This brings well deserved closure to a longstanding issue over equal pay claims in litigation pending since March 2019.

Both parties issued a joint statement following the settlement: “We are pleased to announce that, contingent on the negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement, we will have resolved our longstanding dispute over equal pay and proudly stand together in a shared commitment to advancing equality in soccer.”

The U.S. Soccer Federation will pay a total amount of $22 million to the players – an additional $2 million will be put into a fund for the players’ post-career goals and charitable events. The U.S. Soccer Federation has also stated that it will provide equal pay to both men’s and women’s senior teams in all future tournaments, including the World Cup which will begin Nov. 21 of this year.

This is a great success for women’s soccer and a step in the right direction for women all over the world, showing them that when they fight for what they want they can achieve a lot. But, they shouldn’t need to fight so hard. Unequal pay in soccer is far from an isolated incident — it happens all across the board in professional sports and anything different is considered monumental.

One of the few sports that has committed itself to equal pay between men and women in major tournaments is tennis. The reason that this happened was because of a woman.

Billie Jean King, recognized as one of the greatest women’s tennis players of all time, won the U.S. Open in 1972 and was awarded $10,000 – Ilie Nastase, victor on the men’s side, was awarded $25,000.

After this, King lobbied and threatened to boycott. As a result to her protests, one year later the U.S. Open became the first grand slam to offer equal prize money between

men and women. It then took 35 more years for the rest of the major tournaments to follow suit. The Grand Slam tennis tournaments include the U.S. Open, Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon tournaments.

King had to be the best, she had to win the tournament and then threaten to boycott in order to fight for her right to be paid equally.

There is also still an overall gender pay gap in America.

Women today are still only making 82 cents for every dollar that a man makes. Even more so, women of color are making less than that 82 cents per dollar so the pay discrepancy between men and women of color is more significant. There is no rhyme, reason nor excuse for the wage gap to still exist. With the progression being made for women’s civil and human rights, pay needs to catch up. Women in sports already need to work significantly harder just to be respected by their fellow male athletes, sports reporters and society in general. They shouldn’t have to wage a war on organizations to be paid fairly as well.

A common argument that perpetuates the narrative that female athletes are not being paid as much is because they are not drawing in as much of a crowd. Yet, there is never a solution given to this issue. Instead of leaving the matter at that and moving on, we as a society should be uplifting women in sports, encouraging others to attend their events and raising awareness to the issue. Women in general deserve better. They are strong, hard working and they shouldn’t have to continuously go the extra mile just to be given tangible, equal rights. Equal pay for women in sports, and everywhere, need to make more progress.

Unequal pay in soccer “ is far from an isolated incident...”

Grace Cady is a sophomore studying journalism. She can be be reached at grace.cady@mar-

quette.edu

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