Stephen Chapman’s breezy optimism concerning working women’s future without affirmative action (“Women and the decline of affirmative action,” Op-Ed, July 11) is not borne out by our experience as an organization that works to increase opportunities for women in the construction trades and other high-wage, highly skilled occupations. We know how critically essential affirmative-action regulations (and the programs created to implement them) are to women who want to work in the trades. Very simply, without affirmative action, tradeswomen would not exist.
By suggesting that “piggish managers, boorish colleagues or customers yearning for the Middle Ages” do not in fact make a difference in terms of women’s access to and success in the workplace is just plain wrong.
For instance, the few women who have managed to enter the construction trades invariably encounter difficult working conditions including sexual harassment, unequal training and isolation from other women. They also report discrimination in hiring and layoffs, which affects them economically.
Although Mr. Chapman would have us believe that the wage gap between men and women is grossly exaggerated, tradeswomen in Chicago will earn only 61 percent of what their male counterparts earn. And the fact that “one study found that women between 27 and 33 who have never had children earn 98 percent as much as their counterparts” is not reassuring to the millions of working mothers who are over the age of 33!
Now is not the time for affirmative action to “vanish.” On the contrary, it is still very much needed to ensure that women and minorities have access to jobs that pay well to achieve economic equity.
