Evelyn Murphy Speaks at FSC on Wage Discrimination
Dr. Evelyn Murphy, lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 1986 to 1990, visited FSC Monday, October 29, to give the 2007 Anna Billa Memorial Lecture, hosted by the consumer sciences department. Her subject was wage inequities between men and women, the topic of her 2005 book, Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What To Do About It.
Murphy engaged her audience immediately by conveying the unfairness in the pay structures for men and women. Stating that women still receive only 73 cents for every dollar paid to men, she pointed out that over a working lifetime female college graduates earn over $1 million less than their male counterparts.
As lieutenant governor, Murphy was the first woman to hold constitutional office in Massachusetts. She is currently president of the WAGE Project, Inc., a national organization, and a resident scholar at the in the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.
She is seen in the photo above with FSC Professor of English Emerita Mary Murphy, a key supporter in her successful electoral campaign in 1986. Mary Murphy is wearing her button from the campaign.
The annual Anna Billa lecture honors an alumna of the class of 1934 who was an influential faculty member in the former home economics department (now consumer sciences) and a generous benefactor of the college.