Cantor honored for work on ‘family-friendly’ policies

Irasema T. Garza (right) presented Provost Nancy Cantor with the Work-Life-Family Award from the Women's Bureau for her part in enacting family-friendly policies at the U-M. Cantor, she said, 'is a huge champion of family-friendly policies at the University of Michigan.' In addition, her leadership has been instrumental in allocating resources to the dual career job placement program for partners of tenure-track faculty, and she has made many other contributions to the changing culture at the University, Garza noted. Cantor Carol Hollenshead, director of the Center for the Education of Women, praised Cantor’s commitment to family-friendly work policies. ‘Her understanding and support of family needs have made a real difference to the lives of faculty, staff and students here on this campus.’ Photo by Martin Vloet, U-M Photo Services

“Nearly all working adults want to spend more time with their families,” said Irasema Garza, director of the U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau. Work and family issues are no longer issues for and about women only, she noted, but are embraced by most workers.

Men and women in the workplace share feelings of being more stressed, not getting enough sleep, and being sandwiched between needs of parents and needs of children, she told the audience during the Sept. 29 lecture “Working Women: Striving for Balance,” part of the Work/Life/Family lecture series sponsored by the Center for the Education of Women and the Family Care Resources Program.

The traditional family, she said, as portrayed in the late 1950s and early 1960s by such television characters as Ozzie and Harriet, only exists in about 13 percent of the households in America.

“Today, they would more likely both be working or Harriet would be a single mom trying to hold down a job and take care of her children,” Garza said.

And in the workplace today, policies that address the stress and needs of families are increasingly important to both men and women, and to both employers and employees.

“Family-friendly policies are part of the bottom line in the work world today,” she noted. “Employers are rewarded [for implementing these policies] by increased employee loyalty and productivity.”

At the U-M, those policies include the increase in sick time allowed to be used for child or family care, the Kids Kare at Home program that provides caregivers for sick children or adults at home while the primary caregiver goes to work, and a sliding fee scale for faculty, students or staff members whose children spend their days at one of the University’s child care centers.

Garza also addressed the issue of inequity in compensation between men and women, between Black women and white men, and between Hispanic women and men. While women overall are still getting only about 75 cents for each dollar that men make, African American women are getting about 66 cents, and Latinas make only 55 cents, she said.

“The good news is that women are succeeding in non-traditional fields,” she said. Some of the bad news, in addition to pay scales for women, is that older women have much less or no money in pension funds or other retirement savings plans.

U-M’s family-friendly programs and policies

Both the Center for the Education of Women (CEW) and the Family Care Resources Program (FCRP) have worked to help women faculty, staff and students at the University achieve their full potential. Since 1964, CEW has been committed to helping women at the University achieve their educational and employment goals. Some of the changes at the U-M that are attributed to its efforts: