Ida Castro is uniquely qualified in her role as the federal government’s top advocate for working women.
She knows what it is like to be a hardworking single mother, juggling a job, school and family responsibilities in her ascent from $8,000-a-year public servant in Puerto Rico in the early 1970s to head of the U.S. Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau today.
“Oh, I certainly understand about gender discrimination, wage disparities and lack of opportunities basically because you lack access and even awareness that those opportunities exist,” Castro said, her slight accent a testament to her island roots.
She recalled how at 21, she was divorced with a 2-year-old daughter, had earned a college degree in psychology and needed a job. She went to work for the Municipality of Carolina, the second largest city in Puerto Rico, and eventually became director of its Manpower program.
But Castro knew she wanted more education than her island paradise could offer. So she packed up her daughter and moved to New Jersey, where her extended family of aunts and cousins could help with child care as she worked on a master’s degree and held down a full-time job.
Times were hard as she ran out of money and had to discontinue her studies. But through a series of job changes and new opportunities, she eventually landed a job at Rutgers University, completing a master’s degree in labor studies in the process and earning a law degree as well.
“Those were hard times, but they were good times,” she said during an interview in her corner office of the Labor Department overlooking the Capitol and Pennsylvania Avenue. “Doors opened, and I was able to rough it and tough it out.”
On the surface, she said, she finds it astonishing that as the daughter of humble Puerto Rican parents, she was able to overcome the odds to land a job in the service of the president of the United States.
“I am fortunate that time and effort came together and God gave me the stamina to make something of it and be a role model for my daughter,” she said. Her daughter, Isamar, 25, is a graduate of New York University and works as a counselor for women with AIDS.
“When I talk to young women now, one of the things I always tell them is, `You need to explore, you need to find out information. You need not to be limited because you will walk through the door if you find the door. But you have to know there is a door to even look for it,’ ” Castro said.
“I think young women are doing far better than I did when I was coming up. There is more information, more opportunities, and the limitations are not as severe as they used to be. However, it is not perfect. It is not even close to perfect. There are still too many areas where women feel either limited in access or not ever aware that they could have a presence.”
Since taking over as director of the Women’s Bureau in March 1996, Castro has focused on what the nation’s 61 million working women need and want on the job. A Labor Department survey found women’s top concerns include better wages and benefits, flexibility to balance work and family responsibilities, respect on the job and opportunities for advancement.
To that end, Castro has made it her priority to connect with working women in forums around the country where she can listen to their concerns and inform them of their rights in the workplace.
“The most important thing we want to accomplish is to get women throughout the nation to come together on one day to learn the facts, learn their rights and more important, learn what works and that they are not at it alone,” Castro said. “So that at home, in their communities, in their states, and in their workplaces, they can impact policies.
“There is a major restructuring of the workplace. Corporate restructuring, downsizing, rightsizing, whatever you want to call it. But for most people affected by it, it is really capsizing. It is turning your work life upside down. It is creating certain anxieties and insecurities about the nature of your life.”
Castro noted that for many women, their response to corporate downsizing has been to start their own business. Between 1987 and 1996, the National Foundation for Women Business Owners estimates, the number of women-owned firms increased by 78 percent to nearly 8 million businesses. Women-owned firms now account for more than one-third of all the businesses in the country and employ more than 18 million people.
But, Castro said, the reality may not be as rosy as the statistics suggest.
“I do know it has been an effective alternative for many women who have been dislocated. But I don’t know that it should be encouraged.”
She said many women start businesses as an act of survival in response to downsizing or job relocation. But, she warned, many women entrepreneurs may be trading off their future security, giving up corporate pensions and other employee benefits for the myth of working at home.
“It is a fallacy that you have more time for your family,” she said of the many women who pursue the dream of working from home. “They may be present in their households longer, but they do not have more time for their families.”
Because they are self-employed, they give up federally guaranteed rights as employees to health and safety protections and against workplace discrimination.
“Women tend to move up the ladder by changing jobs,” she said, pointing to her own experience as an example. “But the more job mobility, the less future stability” in terms of pension benefits.
Castro conceded that the corporate world can often be inhospitable to women trying to balance family and business responsibilities and that at the top, it remains largely a man’s world.
“When you look at the Glass Ceiling Report, you find out that barely 5 percent of all the top (corporate) positions in this nation are occupied by women, and a lot of them hold it because they own the company,” she said. “What you tend to hear are more explanations of why we are not there as opposed to outrage over why we are still kept out.
“The minute we start climbing up that ladder, it is almost as if the glass ceiling keeps getting lifted or the floor keeps bottoming out. It seems, for many, to be basically running in place.”
Asked about her primary goal as director of the Women’s Bureau, Castro responded: “I would like to see a closing of the wage gap.”
On average, women earn about 72 cents for every dollar earned by men. But Hispanic women barely cut the 50-cent mark and African-American women barely cut the 60-cent mark, she said. Eighty percent of working women earn less than $25,000 a year.
“When you look at the average, it looks like we are doing much better–and we are,” Castro said. “But the closing of the wage gap is due to the fact that males’ wages have plateaued and somewhat declined in recent years. So I don’t think that is the right reason to close the gap. It should not be based on the fact that the gap between the rich and the rest is widening. It should really be because work of equal value should be paid equitably.”
She raised concerns on how women-dominated occupations, like child-care provider or elder-care provider, tend to pay less than male-dominated jobs, such as janitors.
“My point is not to pay janitors less. But certainly those who care for our children, our parents, our ailing spouses and loved ones deserve adequate pay,” she said.
Since its inception in 1920, the Women’s Bureau has supplied research data that paved the way for labor initiatives that shortened the work week, eliminated child labor, documented the wage gap and the glass ceiling and led to the enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act.
“If business is to remain competitive, it will do very well if it looks to ensure the women in its work force are able to produce, create and sustain their business effectively without having to give up their children, their spouses and their parents,” Castro said. “When policies help working women, they help working men and they help working families and they don’t hurt business.”
