Center for Women plans events to focus on issues still affecting women

Jennet Robinson Alterman, executive director of the Center for Women, stands outside the center's headquarters on Cannon Street. The center is celebrating Women's Equality Day on Monday by showing the movie "Iron Jawed Angels," which looks at the women's suffrage movement.

Eighteen years after the founding of the Center for Women, a Charleston-based advocacy organization focused on economic equality and civic action, the S.C. Senate is 100 percent male at this time, and men occupy 112 of 124 seats in the House, according to latest information from the Legislature's Web site.

Statistics cited by the American Association of University Women reveal that, all things being equal, a female college graduate will earn, within two years, about 80 percent of her male counterpart, which foretells hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income over the course of her life.

Generally, women employed full-time earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to the National Women's Law Center. Black and Hispanic women earn even less: 64 percent and 52 percent of their white male counterparts, respectively.

Median annual earnings of women in South Carolina rank 37th nationally: $26,600 for women, compared with $36,400 for men, according to Law Center statistics. Slightly more than 30 percent of employed women in South Carolina hold managerial positions or professional occupations, putting the state 31st nationally. About one-fourth of the state's businesses are women-owned. Twenty-nine other states have more women-owned businesses than South Carolina.

The nonprofit Center for Women, founded in 1990 by Susan Lunsford and Susan Parsons as a peer counseling service for women coping with life changes, now has about 700 members and an array of programs designed to educate and empower, Executive Director Jennet Robinson Alterman said.

The need for such advocacy remains great, she said, and the organization is attempting to draw attention to issues affecting women by screening the 2004 HBO movie "Iron Jawed Angels," starring Hilary Swank as suffragist Alice Paul. The screening, at the College of Charleston's Physicians Auditorium on Monday, is planned to mark Women's Equality Day, the Aug. 26 commemoration of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which in 1920 granted women the right to vote after a 72-year organizing and lobbying effort by activists.

Ratification of the 19th Amendment was rejected by South Carolina when it considered the legislation on Jan. 28, 1920, but succeeded when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it that August. Forty-nine years later, South Carolina ratified the amendment, certifying the vote four years later in 1973.

Co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Charleston, Skirt! Magazine, the women's and gender studies program at the College of Charleston and the YWCA of Greater Charleston, the movie screening will include opening remarks by league President Lynn Greer and the college's Alison Piepmeier.

Suffrage

Women's Equality Day on Aug. 26 commemorates the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave full voting rights to women in 1920. This milestone in U.S. history came after decades of struggle by advocates of women's suffrage.

By the 19th century, women were becoming more active in society, so it followed they should have more of a voice in determining policies.

The suffrage movement is traced to an 1848 meeting in Seneca Falls, N.Y., where a group of women gathered to discuss equal rights. The Civil War, and calls for the enfranchisement of blacks, interrupted the women's movement, but soon progressives were working in tandem to promote civil rights and the right to vote.

In the latter half of the 19th century, Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone founded the American Woman Suffrage Association; Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, which pushed for a Constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote; Frances Willard started the Women's Christian Temperance Union; and other social reform groups cropped up. These organizations worked cooperatively but sometimes were in conflict.

In 1913, Alice Paul, a proponent of radical tactics, started the Congressional Union (later the National Women's party). She and others who sympathized with her were expelled from Anthony's group.

Three sisters from Charleston — Carrie, Mabel and Anita Pollitzer — soon became active in the movement. Carrie asked College of Charleston President Harrison Randolph to admit women. He refused, citing the $3,000 cost of separate bathrooms. Carrie went door-to-door and raised the money. In 1918, the college opened its doors to women.

Mabel Pollitzer, a biology teacher at the all-girls Memminger School, lobbied the Legislature to fund a public library, the first in Charleston. It opened in 1930. More than 400 showed up the first day.

Anita Pollitzer became friends with Alice Paul and worked closely with Paul to advocate passage of a women's suffrage amendment to the Constitution. Anita lobbied lawmakers aggressively. When it came time for Tennessee to consider ratification, the state was short a vote. Anita tried and failed to persuade Harry Burns to swing his vote in her direction. On the day of the vote, the chamber was split down the middle. A telegram arrived for Burns. It was from his aging mother, who Anita had thought to visit at the last minute. "Please allow me the right to vote before I die," she wrote to her son.

The message of the film, and of the Center for Women, is that every vote is important, Alterman said. "You can't not vote. There are lives on the line. It needs to be considered a sacred right."

Over the years, the Center for Women has secured high-profile supporters. In 2006, Oprah Winfrey gave the organization a $25,000 grant and promoted its work publicly. Keynote speakers include the prominent feminist leader Gloria Steinem, businesswoman and philanthropist Darla Moore, author Sue Monk Kidd, New York Times editor Jill Abramson, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Charlotte Beers, Texas businesswoman and former undersecretary of state.

"When we ask these women (to speak), they all say yes," Alterman said. "They want to give back. They appreciate that in South Carolina the deck is stacked against women."

The group's programming includes workshops in entrepreneurship, legal clinics, a brown-bag lunch series, professional development sessions, the annual Women in Business Conference and an ongoing series called "Women of Influence."

Susan Romaine, chairwoman of the Center for Women's board, said the organization is concerned with institutional discrimination, whether economic or psychological.

The nonprofit incubated the group Darkness to Light after a sexual abuse scandal at Porter-Gaud School drew attention to the issue, Romaine said. The advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse began as a forum discussion organized by the Center for Women, the Lowcountry Children's Center and People Against Rape, but soon became a significant organization in its own right, Romaine said.

The organization's primary focus, however, is economic equity. "Everything boils down to money," Alterman said. And accommodating women better is in the interest of all, she said. By providing more day care closer to the workplace, offering flex time and maternity leave, productivity and morale stand to increase.

More than 70 percent of working women have children under 18 at home, Alterman said. When a woman becomes pregnant in South Carolina, she risks losing her job. Companies with fewer than 20 employees are not subject to the requirements of the Family Leave Act, she noted.

But it takes two to tango, Romaine said. Women need to improve their negotiating skills and increase their determination. Historically, women were not encouraged to participate in organized sports, so they never learned to lose, she said. "Women need to learn to take the punch."

Through its programming each year, the center reaches about 5,000 women, who influence others, who, in turn, influence others. If there's one thing women are good at, it's networking, said Ginger Rosenberg, marketing and outreach coordinator.

Lynn Greer, president of the 50-year-old League of Women Voters in Charleston, agrees. She has worked with the Center for Women on many projects and events, especially those that encourage women to participate in the political process, either as voters or candidates for office.

Together, Greer and Alterman have organized workshops that teach women how to run for office and how to prepare for service on boards and commissions.

While men typically decide themselves to run for some political position, women often need to be prodded by their peers, Greer said.

Now, the Center for Women is focused on extending its reach into Mount Pleasant and Summerville by organizing programs there, by taking its message to those who don't have easy access to the downtown office. It also plans to expand partnerships in the state and eventually establish other offices. And it is considering a microloan program that would benefit local entrepreneurs.

"Women have a lot of economic muscle that they don't flex," Alterman said.

Women in South Carolina

--The Palmetto State ranks 31st or lower on every indicator of women's economic status except women in managerial and professional occupations.

--It ranks 40th on women's earnings, 37th in education and 39th in poverty.

--It is 33rd for the wage gap, and 34th for the percentage of women with health insurance coverage and the percentage of women-owned businesses. It is 31st for women's labor force participation.

--Black women earn a little more than half of what white men in the state earn and are half as likely to hold a four-year college degree as white women.

--Black and Hispanic women are much more likely to be poor than white and Asian-American women.

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.