#BlackLivesMatter Network Ambassador Keynote for April 20 Symposium

Janaya Khan, international ambassador for the #BlackLivesMatter Network, will be the keynote speaker for the 23rd annual Women’s and Gender Studies Symposium at 1 p.m., Friday, April 20, in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center. The event is free and open to the public.

With a timely message about the transformational power of protest, Khan is a leading activist who engages the audience in a profound discussion about social justice and equality.

Known as “Future” within the Black Lives Matter movement, Khan is a black, queer, gender-nonconforming activist (pronouns: they, them, theirs), staunch Afrofuturist, and social-justice educator who presents an enlightening point of view on police brutality and systemic racism.

Khan has been honored with several awards, including the 2015 Bromley Armstrong Humanitarian Award, and has been featured in media outlets, including the Feminist Wire, RaceBaitR, and The Root. Khan currently serves as executive director of Gender Justice LA, a grassroots multi-racial coalition of transgender people and allies.

IWU Speaker Examines Gender Segregation

Author and journalist Jenny Nordberg will speak Wednesday at the President’s Convocation at Illinois Wesleyan University. Nordberg is the author of The Underground Girls of Kabul , which was selected for the University’s Summer Reading Program.

Nordberg’s book is based on her extensive research and reporting inside a war zone on the practice of “bacha posh” – how girls grow up disguised as boys in gender-segregated Afghanistan. In 2010, Nordberg broke the story to a global audience in her work published in The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. The practice of "bacha posh," which had never been previously documented, offers new and previously unknown details about Afghanistan and the inner workings of the deeply conservative society. Nordberg’s book raises new and profound questions about gender in children and teens, nature versus nurture, religion, sexuality, and what roles women play during war. The book has won numerous awards, including the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2014. Nordberg has also developed the website bachaposh.com as an online resource for girls who have grown up as boys due to segregation.

Nordberg is an award-winning journalist and foreign correspondent, columnist and television producer. Together with The New York Times’ investigative unit, she worked on projects such as the examination of the American freight railroad system, a series that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

Also with the Times, she worked on a project on U.S. efforts at exporting democracy to Haiti. She has produced and written several documentaries for American television, and she is also a member of the first investigative team at Swedish Broadcasting’s national radio division, where she supervised projects on terrorism and politics. She has won awards from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Nordberg holds a B.A.in law and journalism from Stockholm University, and an M.A. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

The President’s Convocation, which begins at 11 a.m. in Presser Hall’s Westbrook Auditorium (1210 N. Park St., Bloomington), traditionally opens the academic year at Illinois Wesleyan. Nordberg’s address is free and open to the public. She will also sign copies of the book at 1 p.m. Sept. 14 in the Memorial Center Young Main Lounge.

Ernestine: Commission Seeing Resurgence in Discrimination

While Ernestine Jackson has witnessed racial and cultural progress in the Twin Cities over her 13 1/2–year tenure with the Bloomington Human Relations Commission, she has witnessed resurgence in local discrimination in key areas and, in some cases, in a more subtle, “sophisticated” manner.

The municipal commission’s mission is to work with the community in addressing racial, religious, cultural, gender, and age discrimination in housing, employment, financing, and other areas, under the provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It also educates the public on civil/human rights and expectations and ensuring police and other city agencies and their contractors comply with their own minority hiring and anti-discrimination practices. In essence, commissioners “really try to bring the community together to deal with those issues and hopefully eradicate racism and discrimination in any form,” said Jackson, who investigates discrimination complaints.

“I’m going to be honest with you -- I have seen us going backwards as it relates to civil rights,” Jackson said during Saturday’s Cultural Festival at Illinois State University.  “I have been doing this kind of work for more than 40 years, and I’ve just been saddened that we’re at a point now where we’re still working on those issues that we thought we had fixed years ago. The complaints I’m getting are almost identical to complaints we were getting over 40 years ago.

“The things we’re seeing, the things we’re dealing with, are things we thought we had conquered. If you look at what’s happening, not only in Bloomington but all over, if you shut your eyes, you’d think you were back some time ago. That isn’t to say we haven’t been successful in areas; that’s not to say there haven’t been things that were done that haven’t been good. But now, we’re having to confront issues that most people thought were over.”

The BHRC, established under , is structured along the lines of Illinois’ Department of Human Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Following an investigation to determine whether an individual complaint constitutes a “probable cause case,” the commission attempts to resolve the issue and, if a resolution can’t be reached, the complaint moves to public hearing.

To an extent, the Twin’s Cities’ growing diversity has revived old-school discrimination in new directions. Housing discrimination remains a major concern for Muslim-Americans and other cultural groups, Jackson reported.

“Why would there be a resurgence of Not In Our Town if we didn’t believe things were happening that shouldn’t be happening,” she posed. “We’re fighting some of the same battles – they’re just more sophisticated.”

For information or to file a complaint, contact the commission at 309-434-2215 or by emailing hr@cityblm.org. To view Bloomington’s Human Relations Ordinance, visit the commission at http://www.cityblm.org/index.aspx?page=263.

NIOT:B/N at Saturday's Cultural Festival, gathering youth input on the state of Bloomington-Normal.

Stereotypes widen the gender wage gap

Gena Glover

YWCA McLean County

Did you know that women who work full-time, year round are only paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes? This is called the wage gap.

The wage gap results in women earning $11,608 less each year in median earnings than men.  Even though steps toward equality have been taken, including the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Lilly Ledbetter Act, the gap in wages has not changed in more than a decade. 

Why has there been little change? Because outdated stereotypes about women and their “proper” place still exist. Those stereotypes maintain: 

* Women are not “breadwinners” of their families. Many still believe women don’t need raises or promotions because their income is just “extra” and not the “primary” income.  Women are the main breadwinners in a record high 40 percent of households with children, but current workplace policies too often don’t reflect today’s reality.  That hurts families and hurts our economy.

* Certain jobs are “man’s work” and women cannot do that type of work. The higher paying jobs which require physical labor or managerial skills are usually thought of as “man’s work” and women are not even considered for those roles because people do not believe they can perform the required tasks. Women are supposed to act like ladies. There are many who believe that the way women act and dress impact their ability to negotiate salaries and jobs.  The belief is that women should look pretty and dress like a “woman” and performing traditional male jobs may not allow this.

* Women are unable to commit to their jobs because they are caregivers. Throughout the years, and still today, women have been denied positions, promotions, and salary because of being mothers.  Many believe that mothers are not as committed to their jobs, whereas fathers are not viewed the same way, and sometimes offered salary increases because they have a family to support. 

These stereotypes are harmful because they lead to the wage gap. They keep women in lower paying and lower visibility jobs, and exclude women from informal communication networks. 
While the wage gap is harmful to all women, it does affect different groups of women differently:

 * African-American women make 64 cents to each dollar a man earns.

* Hispanic women make 54 cents to each dollar a man earns.

* Mothers who work year-round typically make $38,000, vs. the $55,000 fathers earn under similar circumstances.

* Women in same-sex relationships make $38,000 vs. men in same-sex relationships who earn $47,000. 

When looking at how this impacts women throughout their career, we see that women who work full-time, year-round lose $464,320 over 40 years, and would have to work more than 12 years to make up the gap.

The average monthly Social Security benefits of women are $13,090, compared with monthly  $17,170 for men with comparable benefits. 

According to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Enforcement Guidance:  Unlawful Disparate Treatment of Workers With Caregiving Responsibilities (May 2007), available at http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/caregiving.html#fn44;cf.Back,365F.3dat119, the wage gap is important because “discriminating based on stereotypes isn’t just wrong, it’s illegal. When employers base their decisions on sex stereotypes this violates the prohibition against sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." While many will continue to hold onto the myths, it is a reality for many. As President Obama has stated about the wage gap, “It’s not a myth; it’s math.”