Hey PA folks. Thanks for sharing THK! She really is wicked awesome!
THK OpEd 10/8 TERESA HEINZ
The retirement gap
By Teresa Heinz | October 8, 2005
A LIFETIME of hard work should bring economic security -- income sufficient to raise a family, and resources to enjoy a retirement earned over many working years. It is troubling that as far off as this goal seems to millions of American men, it is even further off for America's working women, especially in the area of retirement security.
Even as families become more dependent than ever on second incomes, and the number of women as sole providers grows, women still earn less money than men; women are less likely to have a pension than men; and women are less able to contribute to 401(k)s and similar self-funded plans than men
Women's status today as second-class economic citizens has deep roots. It wasn't until the early 1900s that the doors of opportunity began to open for American women. Pioneers like Mary Lyon, founder of Mt. Holyoke College, blazed pathways for girls in education. Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, founders of Hull House, started the settlement house movement and enabled thousands of women to find permanent and fulfilling employment as social workers. Our circles of opportunity grew wider still as working-class women formed unions to protect their coworkers in textile mills and other factories.
As unions fought for more organized work places, as America's men marched to war to fight Hitler and Imperial Japan, and as the postwar economic boom transformed our society, more and more women entered the US labor force. The doors of many more professions, including industrial workplaces, were opened to women. Stories like that of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whose Stanford law degree was viewed by the 1950s legal establishment as an expensive ticket to the typing pool, but who earned a place on the nation's highest bench, became common. Today, there is no question that working women are in a stronger position professionally and financially than ever before.
No wonder the Medford Ladies liked her so much! She is great. It's interesting that she publishes under the name Teresa Heinz. I think it's because she is using Heinz Foundation research and because that's the name she works as in the Foundation.