Murphy, Evelyn F.

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Murphy, Evelyn F.

PERSONAL:

Female. Education: Duke University, B.A., 1961, Ph.D., 1965; Columbia University, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Brandeis University, 515 South St., MS 079, Waltham, MA 02454-9110. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER:

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Boston, lieutenant governor, 1987-91; Blue Cross Blue Shield, MA, executive vice president, 1993-96; WAGE Project, Inc., founder and president 2003—. Healthcare and Policy Institute, MA, founding president; SBLI USA Mutual Life Insurance Company, corporate director, 1999—; also served in Massachusetts state government cabinet as Secretary of Environmental Affairs and Secretary of Economic Affairs.

WRITINGS:

(With E.J. Graff) Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men—and What to Do about It, Simon &Schuster (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Evelyn F. Murphy was lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 1987 to 1991. During this time, she served as de-facto acting governor

while, then-Massachusetts governor, Michael Dukakis underwent his failed bid for the presidency. After losing her own election for governor in 1990, Murphy joined Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and founded its Healthcare and Policy Institute. In 2003 Murphy founded and became president of the WAGE Project, Inc. The Women Are Getting Even Project is a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate the gender wage gap. This topic is one that Murphy has researched for years and resulted in her publishing, with journalist E.J. Graff, Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men—and What to Do about It. The book sets out to explain the wage gap, document current examples of the gap, and offers suggestions as to how to close the gap on personal, local, and national levels.

Reviews of Getting Even were mostly positive. A critic writing in Publishers Weekly praised Murphy's efforts, saying that she "gives readers the tools and the inspiration they'll need to tackle individual discrimination issues without necessarily going to court." In a review in the Library Journal, Erica L. Foley stated that the authors "have clearly done their homework." Foley went on to note that the writing in Getting Even "is infused with a passion to motivate awareness and change."