The Center for Women and Work (CWW) has a myriad of responsibilities to discover how the workplace can be a safe place of opportunity for everyone. Although much of the CWW’s research focuses on topics specific to women, its research advocates for men and women alike.
Founded in 1998, The Center for Women and Work is located in the basement of Coburn Hall on south campus. It is primarily a research center, says the director Meg Bond. However, students are often involved with the center as well, from work study students to their Emerging Scholars Program, where undergraduate juniors and senior students work with a faculty member’s research.
According to Bond, there is now a much subtler bias than the blatant discrimination that was more common through the 1980s. “I say that with some hesitation because there still is a lot of the blatant kind of stuff, and we’re still seeing that going on in the current culture of our country,” she says. “At one level, things have changed because we’re talking about it and because there’s more and more attention paid to the nitty, insidious—subtle is probably a nice word for it— but the more insidious, harder to see kinds of dynamics that really reinforce gender roles that really push women to the margin.”
As a result, the gender conversation has changed to create more awareness of these subtleties. They also include the differing challenges people experience due to their unique characteristics. “There’s much more attention being paid to intersectionality. So much of the early discussion about gender was comparisons of women and men, but that’s really way too simplified and it’s way too generalized. That’s not where our dialogue should be. We really should be looking at much more nuanced kinds of experiences: there are particular issues for women in low income kind of settings, there are different issues for African American women, there are different issues for Asian women. There are lots of ways in which the many, many characteristics that shape our experience intersect,” Bond says.
Still, there is a great amount of work to do and improvement to be made. CWW’s research shows that there is still sexual harassment in the workplace, and many ways to stop and prevent it from occurring. A recent research project shows that sexual harassment is still a problem and is rarely formally reported in any way. The “Report of the Co-Chairs of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace” shows that “roughly three out of four individuals who experienced harassment never even talked to a supervisor, manager, or union representative about the harassing conduct.”
Since UMass Lowell focuses greatly on its STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program, this is especially, as STEM is generally a very male-dominated field. Therefore, this workplace is more susceptible to subtle bias and sexual harassment. The Center has researched greatly on this, and even received a grant recently from the National Science Foundation to perform further research, specifically to examine micro-inequities in the work environment within higher education.
Another core research program focuses on care work such as nursing, child care and home care. According to Darcie Boyer, the Center’s manager, care work is a field that tends to get lower pay because it is traditionally a female role. One recent project researched census data and looked at the people in care work, what their specific occupation was and what the pay was for this occupation.
CCW also researches gender violence, does case studies, holds events and other work to advocate for gender equality in the workplace. “We don’t try to cover every single… whatever but we do have core focal areas where we have strength and depth of expertise among faculty,” says Bond.
The research benefits the workplace itself as well. Sexual harassment, according to the Select Task Force, can create large legal costs for businesses along with the “steep cost to those who suffer it, as they experience mental, physical and economic harm.” The less sexual harassment there is, the more profitable the business is, the happier the employees are and therefore the more productive they are.
In fact, all participants in the workplace benefit from equality. “I think a lot of women realize how the patriarchy affects men and also boys. Their roles are also defined in ways that are not necessarily beneficial, helpful, [or] feel good for them. And I think being part of the conversation broadens it and I think helps the movement,” Boyer says.
Students and the rest of the community can get involved in the equality conversation at events such as Women’s Work, an upcoming fundraiser on Dec. 1 at the Umass Lowell Inn and Conference Center. Vendors will be selling arts and crafts, and there will be performances, art and food. The event is free. Students and community members can even apply to be a vendor. More information can be found at their website, www.uml.edu/Research/CWW/Events/Womens-Works.aspx.
