Mayor Jackie Biskupski recently called for changes in the law to help women have equal pay and used data that reflected no change in women’s progress to end pay disparity. In my dissertation published in 2009, “Women in Educational Leadership, High School Principals Negotiating Gender and Patriarchy in a Mormon Culture,” the data revealed that in Utah, women earn 70 cents for every dollar a man earns. Nationally, women made 77 cents. Now new figures show that nationally women have made progress to 80 cents, but no progress in Utah. Women are often beguiled into believing that progress is being made for women’s rights, but the data derails that belief.
Women cannot capture greater stature without changes in the culture of unequal representation on every front, but particularly in leadership. Men take their power into the workplace, a power that women do not have: the power of the priesthood. One important aspect of my research was the difference in a principal who was a bishop on Sunday and the principal on Monday is that a woman will never be the bishop on Sunday; therefore, no transfer of power into the workplace. Let’s change that dynamic or the pay disparity will not end.
Marilyn A. Miller, Ph.D., Salt Lake City