ve selected out a small number of costs, neglected e benefits, and ignored the costs of discontinuing ffirmative Action. In fact, Affirmation Action has inimal costs and major benefits.

bsts to Business

Even using their own figures, the costs of Affirative Action incurred by business are tiny. Citicorp, America's third largest bank, spent more 1 auto racing in 1978 than it did on Affirmative Acon in 1977. (Citicorp gave over half a million. ollars to the U.S. Auto Club racing program on ondition that the drivers wear Citicorp patches on eir driving suits or decals on their cars.)

A massive study prepared by the Business Roundble studied 48 large companies which together present 19 percent of U.S. corporate capital (The ost of Govermment Regulation Study, March 979). For banks, the cost of writing and implementg an Affirmative Action program averaged only 101 percent of gross revenues, or $12.30 per mployee. The three giant banks studied, Chase Manhattan, Citicorp and Continental Illinois, spent n average of $356,000 on Affirmative Action in 977. These banks grossed $9.9 billion in revenues nd employed 87,000 people.

In banking, the salary of the average chief excutive is considerably higher than the cost of the Afirmative Action program. 1980 figures for the top. officers' pay at the three banks cited in the Business Roundtable study are $710,000, $589,000, and 507,207. Walter Wriston, Chair of Citibank, earned $631,054 in 1977 in current and deferred income. This was the year that Citicorp spent somewhere round $356,000 on Affirmative Action. Most pankers have received hefty raises in the past several years; most banks reported hefty profits.

An additional cost to the companies is the cost of

Affirmative Action litigation. Batteries of lawyers spend thousands of hours hoping to avoid Department of Labor remedies, which typically consist of back pay, training programs, job posting, job reevaluation, and job descriptions. The same money spent on litigation, if invested in the company's workforce, would benefit company and employee alike.

Costs to the Government

A Congressional Research Service document found that Affirmative Action cost the federal government $37.7 million in 1975. Subsequently, the government program was streamlined, consolidating 33 agency programs into one, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (DOL), with a 1980 budget of only $50.6 million. The OFCCP oversees 350,000 companies employing nearly 40 million ⚫ workers, an expenditure of only $1.27 per employee covered.

In fact, OFCCP's systemic approach is extremely cost-efficient when compared with agencies that work on an individual basis. The OFCCP estimates the cost of an individual complaint processing to be $4,000 to $5,000, while the entire cost of a field investigation of an entire corporation is only $10,000. Social and Economic Costs of Discrimination

Underutilization of the skills and talents of women and minorities is pronounced. For example, in 1979, of all women 25 years and older who had some college education, over 30% were employed as clerical workers, in jobs for which college training is not required. Many women are thus overqualified for their jobs. They cannot gain promotions or find employment in other fields.

Sex and race discrimination at the workplace (continued on page 8)

If It Works in Hawaii...

(Ferity, Hawaii)-In April 1981, a group of women began to walk together in Waikiki once a week. This wasn't just a stroll, or one of the recent protest marches. Instead we wanted to observe the harassment of women on the street, and we wanted o practice our assertive skills.

Four of us went out that first night. We practiced walking with confidence, not looking timid or nerVous. We practiced meeting men's eyes, rather than quickly looking away as we had done most of our lives. And we practiced not giving way when men walked by. Rather than automatically dodging passing men, we simply stood still or walked straight ahead. This was a hard one because although our minds stood firm, our bodies had a tendency to duck.

We learned a lot from those first walks. We found we could retrain our submissive behavior, with conscious efforts. And we learned that our new behavior forced men to act differently also. They did move aside when we stood firm; they did avert their eyes when we refused to do so.

Another lesson from our walks: In males, there is a fine line (or no line at all) between attraction and hostility. Many times, as men stroll by, they make remarks of supposed attraction ("Hey, sweetheart...Lookin' good tonight, girls....") Yet 'when their sexual invitation is ignored or, worse yet, refused, they invariably get hostile: "Stuck-up bitch...kiss my ass, bitch...." Our experience shows that street harassment is exactly that; verbal harassment of women is neither innocent nor complimentary. It is instead an indication of dominance and thinly disguised anger.

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On later walks we began to practice confronting men who harassed us. When men verbally accosted us, we responded with strong words. Those men who violated our body space by touching or hitting us, we confronted outright. All of us together loudly protested, bringing the public's attention to the viola-

tion, defying the unwritten law which says women don't fight back. While loudly berating the man for touching (or hitting), we usually encircled him physically, or stepped right up to his face to show that we weren't intimidated. The males were usually stunned, then angry, and finally left making threats. In every one of our verbal or physical confrontations, the men did back down. We were determined and united-and we were strong.

These evening walks have been both exhilarating and painful. To learn the power women have together is to open up our eyes to the macho boundaries which control our lives. The skills we are practicing-asserting our right to be on the street, to fight back against harassment, to exist--these are the skills little boys learn at eight or nine. But these are skills we will learn, we must learn, to live on this earth as free women!

Thy Neighbor's House

(HerSay)-The author of a new book on homemakers has come up with an unusual plan to guarantee that work-at-home wives don't fall through the cracks in the Social Security system. Many widowed homemakers, because they don't work for salaries, never become eligible for Social Security in their own names, despite the years of work they put in raising families.

Now Rae Andre, author of Homemakers, The Forgotten Women, has come up with a solution to that problem. A homemaker, Andre says, should clean her neighbor's house for pay, while the neighbor, also for pay, cleans hers. Both women, Andre says, could then qualify for Social Security and disability insurance. Andre got the idea from a woman professor of economics, and the scheme is perfectly legal.

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BITS & PIECES

Study Backs Midwifery

(HerSay)--Nurse midwives, backed up by doctors, deliver babies which are just as healthy as those delivered by physicians, according to an unusual four-year study by Rosemary Mann, head of the Alternative Birth Center at San Francisco General Hospital.

The study was published in the July issue of The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. It found no significant differences in the number of complications, mortality rates or birth weights among the first 1,000 babies delivered in the program. In fact, the mortality rate among the babies delivered by midwives was a much lower 9 per 1,000 births than the 16.9 per 1,000 births among physician-aided deliveries.

The Alternative Birth Center was set up to offer a more homelike atmosphere, to try to accommodate entire families rather than just the expectant mother, and to try to keep technology from intruding on the birthing process.

Childcare Policies

A 50-page report issued in August by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights provides a stinging critique of federal policies on childcare and working mothers. It points out that the inadequacies of these policies constitute sex discrimination by keeping women in continued poverty and dependence. Unfortunately, the report comes at a time when the federal government, under right-wing prodding, is pulling back from whatever lukewarm commitment it once had to female equality.

"Child Care and Equal Opportunity for Women, compiled for the Civil Rights Commission by the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women in Massachusetts, points to three areas of failure in federal policy. For instance, programs like the Social Security Act and Aid to Families with Dependent Children both penalize women for working or for moving up in their jobs. They remove childcare funds when the family income creeps above the most minimal level.

In another example, the report notes that federal employment policies hardly address the problem of women workers' childcare responsibilities. Elsewhere, the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits employers from denying women medical leave for pregnancy but does not mention women's need for non-medical leave to take care of children. The report concludes that inadequate childcare prevents women from taking part in federally supported training and employment programs, prevents women from working or advancing in the jobs they have, and thus keeps them poor and dependent. Minority women, the report notes, suffer especially.

The report marks a new sophistication in the. understanding of how sex discrimination works by placing equality of opportunity beyond the reach of women with children. It is unlikely, however, to produce any practical changes. For both economic and ideological reasons, conservatives in the administration and Congress are bent on driving many women out of the workforce and back into traditional roles as wives and mothers. Equally, the administration has committed itself to policies which override or ig⚫nore the claims of minorities and the poor.

The Guardian September 2, 1981

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