(Bloomberg News) For Gloria Steinem, the international conversation that the Occupy Wall Street protests sparked about economic inequality is, at its heart, about gender.
Start with the thousands of dollars in student loans that saddle the average U.S. college graduate. Women "are paid unequally -- so they are going to have a harder time paying back that debt," Steinem, the 77-year-old feminist who helped start the women's rights movement with the publication of Ms. Magazine nearly 40 years ago, said in an interview at Bloomberg News' New York bureau. "It's outrageous because they are kind of indentured when they graduate."
Steinem's comments echo a common lament among young women in the Occupy movement, which began on Sept. 17 as a demonstration against the widening wealth gap and an economic system that protestors say favors the rich. The unemployment rate for college graduates aged 20-24 rose to 9.1 percent last year from 8.7 percent in 2009, the highest on record for that demographic, according to the Project on Student Debt. Add to that the burdens of student loans, and young Americans say they don't stand much chance.
"I have $93,000 in debt and I don't make enough to pay it off," said Adah Gorton, 23, a graphic designer and graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, as she marched with protestors across the Brooklyn Bridge on Nov. 17. "Have you ever had something hanging over your head, every day, 24 hours a day? That's what it's like."
Graduates owed an average $25,250 in 2010, estimates the Project on Student Debt, a nonprofit research organization in Oakland, California. Women entering the workforce with that liability are at a disadvantage: They earned 81 cents for every dollar their male counterparts did, on average, in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Nan Terrie, a Florida native who was home-schooled and at 18 is in her second year of law school at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, said she already owes $10,000.
"I'm here fighting for equal pay for equal work," Terrie said. "I'm tired of women being the backbone of society."
She was seated on a plastic chair, near a sign calling for the return of bankruptcy protection for student loans, in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, the birthplace and physical symbol of the movement where protesters camped for about two months until police evicted them Nov. 15.
The Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York spread to cities on four continents, including London, Sydney, Rome and Tokyo. The demonstrators refer to themselves as "the 99 percent," a reference to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz's study showing the richest 1 percent control 40 percent of U.S. wealth.
Wage Gap