17 Apr The Short Version: Equal Pay

Last week, Cleo Abram blogged about “The White Whale of Politics,” aka, a brokered convention. This week’s story talks about the elephant in the room in most corporate offices: equal pay for women.

Note: If you missed any of Cleo’s blogs, just go to our Home Page, type “The Short Version” into Search (magnifying glass icon) and poof, like magic, the stories appear.

Cleo Constantine Abram of the “The Short Version,” offering densely packed spins on issues of national and global importance.

Last week, Cleo Abram blogged about “The White Whale of Politics,” aka, a brokered convention. This week’s story talks about the elephant in the room in most corporate offices: equal pay for women.

What’s happening?

You have probably heard this statistic: for every dollar the average working man earns, the average woman earns only 79 cents. But there’s a lot of nuance hidden inside that fact. These numbers are just the beginning when it comes to equal pay.

This past Tuesday April 12th was Equal Pay Day, which marks when the average working woman would finally catch up to the amount her male counterpart made the year before.

Why is it important?

Advocates celebrate Equal Pay Day as an opportunity to publicize the wage gap that still exists between men and women and galvanize support for equal pay. Critics point out that most of the wage gap is due to individual decisions men and women make, like about childbearing or profession. Therefore, they argue, addressing the gap is not society’s responsibility. The question of how much we should do to address the disparity bubbles to the surface in areas as diverse as the presidential election, professional tennis and soccer, credit scores, and more.

Debate it!

Should society do more to address the wage gap between men and women?

Continue reading here for the pros and cons.

Why “The Short Version” on TIO:

Eight+ years ago, Telluride Inside…and Out began as a lifestyle webzine. Today, in the full knowledge that Telluride is a window on the world, we continue to bring the “zazz” (short for “pizzazz) of the region to a local, national, and global audience by covering everything from Telluride’s robust cultural economy – major events and festivals – to health and fitness and outdoor adventure. When Telluride travels, we write about places to go, people to meet too. (That’s part of the “Out” part of our handle, the other, obviously, Outdoors.)

And now, this new weekly column, “The Short Version,” which offers simple summaries of issues of national and global importance. (Though we won’t go political, or rather we won’t show bias in the upcoming election.)

“The Short Version” is written by Cleo Constantine Abram, the daughter of Telluride locals Eleni Constantine and Jonathan Abram (and therefore an honorary local and regular visitor) and a digital strategist at Precision Strategies, a political consulting firm.

Why “The Short Version”? Because, though we live in Shangri-La, our bubble is not impermeable and the rest of the world is only a click away. Because there is no inconsequential action; only consequential inaction. And because information is power in a moment so many of us are feeling powerless.

More about Cleo Constantine Abram:

Cleo grew up in Washington D.C., lives in New York City, and loves to visit her parents in Telluride. She authors “The Short Version,” a newsletter that explains each week’s most important issue and both sides of the debate around it.

Cleo is a digital strategist at Precision Strategies, a political consulting firm born of the Obama 2012 presidential campaign.

Cleo’s work focuses on ways to share, educate, and inform using online platforms. While in college at Columbia University, she guided the school’s entrance into online education through her role as the youngest elected representative to the Columbia Senate, which makes university-wide policy.

She continued her work on online education at TED-Ed, the educational branch of the nonprofit, building new programs and online tools to support high school teachers worldwide.

Continuing her work with TED, Cleo founded and led an early TEDx conference, the organization’s community-specific series.

Most importantly, Cleo loves to ski!