Spring 2000 Forum - Shuttle

Women & Work Forum on Discrimination and Health:
We've Come a Long Way Baby, and Have Further To Go
by Elaine Hayes Keough

"It's hard to believe that this kind of discrimination still exists, especially in this city which is so diverse." This was the sentiment of the day at the recent Center for Women and Work's (CWW) annual forum, "Gathering at the Well."

The quote above from Bernadette Rivera, a community panelist, was in response to research on racial bias presented by Diane Hughes of New York University and stories of discrimination relayed by Pov Ye '97, who works at the Cambodian Mutual Aid Association Jobs Program. More than 50 community and university members participated in the day-long forum that looked at racial and gender bias and their effects on health.

The forum was structured so that research was grounded by local examples from community panelists. "I think the melding of research perspectives with local examples - the pairing of formal methods of inquiry with narratives - has considerable potential for expanding both what we know and how we know it," said Meg Bond, co-director of the Center for Women and Work.

The afternoon session focused on gender and occupational illnesses. Speaker Karen Messing, professor at the University of Quebec and author of One-Eyed Science, pointed out that the study of occupational illnesses are skewed toward men. Research is not being done to look at what jobs cause illness in women. Even money for prevention of illnesses is given to industries dominated by men, because there is no research to support otherwise.

"Occupational illnesses in women are seen as weakness or 'unreal', because we're not acknowledging difference in women's work," stated Messing.

Panelists Susan Moir, project director for the Construction Occupational Health Program, and Shirley Alejandro from the Enterprise Community, both gave countless examples of how men are simply unaware of how the design of equipment is biased towards men. Moir said women's tools often "disappear" on the job site because they prefer the smaller scaled, Japanese-made tools as opposed to American-made tools. Similarily, Alejandro said that as a police officer, her bullet-proof vest was too big and rode up due to how high the gun belt sat on her hips. The vest would not have adequately protected her had a bullet been fired. It also made it awkward for her to remove her gun from its holster.

"We need much more awareness of all the ways - big and small, obvious and more subtle - that discrimination affects us. And, we need to learn from each other about effective ways to address these situations," said Jean Pyle, co-director of CWW.

The day ended with a reception and musical performance by Chandrika Sharma, coordinator of disability services in the Office of Student Services.