Mosaic: 100 years after women's suffrage, pay gap remains
As we reach the middle of national Women's History Month, statistics show that women earn 79 cents for every $1 men get paid for the same work with the annual gender wage gap in Illinois reaching $12,436 for full-time workers, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families. But the pay gap is even wider depending on race and social class, says Mia Hardy, Elgin Community College assistant professor of sociology.
"Additionally, for women seeking to rise in their respective fields, there is less access to mentoring and networking opportunities that men have," she adds.
Hardy was among a panel of women leaders - Hanover Township director of aging services Tracey Colagrossi, state Sen. Cristina Castro of Elgin, state Rep. Michelle Mussman of Schaumburg, legislative attorney Maaria Mozaffar, Cyndi Wollack, Hanover Township veterans specialist, retired neuroscientist Talat Khan, and me - participating in a March 7 International Women's Day celebration at the Hanover Township Senior Center.
Among a variety of topics, speakers highlighted needs for subsidized day care programs to support single mothers, national paid maternity leave and women advocating for each other.
Women's vote: Beaten. Spit on. Jailed. Many suffragettes endured these hardships and more to help secure women's right to vote. State Rep. Christina Castro, an Elgin Democrat, highlighted such sacrifices in a separate meeting in Hanover Park to commemorate the centennial of women's voting rights.
A daughter of migrant farmworkers from Mexico, Castro said there weren't many female candidates when she first ran for elected office.
"Don't wait to be asked," Castro said. "If we want to break barriers and ceilings, we have to do that. Our lives are a blank canvas. We have the power to design how we want to paint that canvas."
The "Tea Time" event was organized by three suburban women of color who themselves broke barriers: Hanover Park trustees Fanny López Benítez and Sharmin Shahjahan and Village Clerk Eira Corral Sepúlveda.
Minorities count: Suburban school districts are ramping up efforts to educate multilingual immigrant families about the importance of being counted in the 2020 Census. Elgin Area School District U-46, the state's second-largest school district, educating more than 38,000 students, is home to more than 100 cultures. The district serves 55% Latino students and large groups who speak Gujarati, Lao, Polish and Urdu.
Palatine Township Elementary District 15 serves families speaking 70 languages, mostly Spanish, Bulgarian, Polish, Korean, Japanese, Tamil and Telugu.
In Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54, 58% of the nearly 16,000 students speak a language other than English at home - 93 languages in all.
Arriving soon: Census questionnaires will be arriving in mailboxes this week and forms must be filled out starting Census Day on April 1.
Families can respond online and by phone in 13 non-English languages.
The U.S. Census Bureau's new website, 2020census.gov, offers language assistance guides in 59 non-English languages from Albanian to Yoruba, and videos explaining how to complete the census questionnaire online, by phone or by mail. The site includes information in English, Spanish, American Sign Language, Braille and large print.
Efforts recognized: Advocating and giving voice to minority populations earned the Rev. Curtis Sartor Jr. Elgin's 2020 Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award.
Sartor is a tenured professor of architecture and associate vice president for diversity and spiritual development at Judson University in Elgin. Most notably, he implemented a universitywide focus on racism and diversity by creating two diversity committees addressing issues on campus and involving Elgin community leaders. He sponsors and mentors the campus Black Student Union, has led town-hall meetings and has used popular movies to initiate dialogue on diversity issues and explore the experience of being black today.
Share stories, news and happenings from the suburban mosaic with mkrishnamurthy@dailyherald.com.