making waves

New figures released by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research indicate that women are still generations away from equal pay with men. In fact, the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that we’re moving in the wrong direction! The gender pay gap widened in 2003 for the first time since 1999, marking the first “statistically significant” drop in women’s wages since 1995. In 2003, women in the United States took home 75.5 cents for every dollar earned by men. Add race to the mix — black women earn less than 63 cents for every dollar earned by white men, Latinas just over 50 cents — and you’ve stirred up a three-alarm recipe for activism.

Traditionally, Hispanics revile debt, but unfortunately, a cash-only policy isn’t necessarily to your credit in the U.S. Because they’re staying in the black, one in five Latinos in the United States has no credit score, according to the Washington Post. This is particularly important given the youth of the Hispanic population in the U.S.; the average Latina is in her mid-20s, on the verge of her prime home-buying years. Home ownership among Latinos is on the rise, at 48.7%, but it still lags behind the rate for non-Hispanic whites, 76.1%, as well as the national average of 69%.

Forget pencil skirts. What your professional wardrobe really needs is…oversized coveralls! A recent article in The Economist reports that, although farms in the United States are generally on the decline, the number of female-headed farms is growing, with states like Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Maine at the vanguard of the trend. A recent USDA survey showed that, in Pennsylvania, the number of female-headed farms rose by 1,000 between 1997 and 2002. Women’s key motivations for tackling the tractor include escalating concerns about environmental issues, such as the use of hormones and pesticides, and the burgeoning interest in free-range and organic farming.

The incidence of HIV in the Hispanic community is growing fast — and women are particularly at risk.According to the National Council for La Raza, Latinas account for 20% of AIDS cases among women in the U.S., a rate seven times higher than that of non-Hispanic whites. AIDS is now the third leading killer for Hispanic women aged 35–44, compared with the ninth leading killer for anglo women of that age. The CDC estimates that as many as 55% of HIV-infected Latinas contract the disease via heterosexual contact. According to Janet Murguia, Executive Director of the NCLR, “we will not win the battle against this debilitating disease unless we make it a community priority to educate our youth, their parents, and community leaders against the growing rates of HIV infection and methods of prevention.”

This past winter marked the 20th anniversary of the gas leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, a catastrophe said to have claimed 15,000 lives and left over 500,000 injured and debilitated survivors. Considered the worst industrial disaster in history, the event’s tragic effects persist in the city’s groundwater, alleged to contain high levels of hazardous toxins now putting a new generation of Bhopal residents at risk. “Even today, mothers in the affected areas of Bhopal have been found to have carcinogenic elements in their breast milk,” survivor Champa Devi Shukla told CBS News. Union Carbide paid the Indian government $470 million in an out-of-court settlement in 1989, but the San Francisco Chronicle reports that most successful claimants to compensation received no more than $550.