Baruch College’s Women in Business club supports female students from all majors in their professional and personal development and prepares them for a career in an unequal job field.

WIB is the school’s largest female professional organization, according to their website.

The club holds events and services throughout the year that are both educational and fun for all students.

It aims to create a safe space for female students on campus where they can go to achieve their goals alongside the support of other women and learn about entering the job market.

Most clubs and groups at Baruch are co-ed so WIB creates a place where women can discuss their ideas and issues with people who may have similar experiences and perspectives.

“Our main goal is to empower all of our members and help them grow both personally and professionally,” said club Executive Vice President Paige Goulden. “We want to develop hard skills, soft skills, everything that they’re going to need to become successful business leaders once they graduate from college and head out into the real world.”

A lot goes into helping club members grow and WIB’s four main annual events are organized with the intentions of supporting women in mind.

Style Your Success Fashion Show is one of the main events of the club, which is coming up later in the semester. It is supposed to be a fun night of fashion, music and friends, but it holds a larger significance.

The looks portrayed in the show are all business and business-casual styles, meant to inform women in the audience what types of outfits they can wear in different professional settings, while still being fashionable.

The proceeds from the event are donated to “Relay for Life” from the American Cancer Society. WIB also donates and volunteers for cancer-related causes with their “Pink and Denim Day” event in mid-October.

They raise money for breast cancer research through the American Cancer Society’s “Making Strides for Breast Cancer.” The club also participates in the Breast Cancer Walk and the Brain Tumor Walk.

Many of its events, however, deal with professional and business-related topics, such as the annual Spring semester event “Pearls of Wisdom Leadership Conference,” a professional and fundraising event in which female professionals lead discussions about their experiences in the workplace and advice for students.

“Every event aims to provide students with valuable insight on the professional world,” said Danielle Inlall, the organization’s executive treasurer. “Our large-scale events are also an opportunity to celebrate our hard work and give back to various charities.”

Made up of a multitude of committees, the club has members who are dedicated to planning each of the four main events, to philanthropy and member development, as well as several other topics.

But while WIB is open to all students, Zicklin School of Business majors or otherwise, it is still considered to be a business club, and thus its members deal with business-relevant problems.

An example of this is the gender wage gap where women are paid just 79 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to an article from CNBC. The experiences of women across every field also prove this statistic to be true.

As part of a club dedicated to helping women thrive in business settings, WIB Executive Board members discussed their thoughts on the wage gap with The Ticker.

“I think it’s trash. And I think that, you know, there’s a lot of talk now about what to do about it, but I think the best that we can do is get people to vote and [to] educate, because we do have a lot of educational events and we’ll have panels and stuff. I think the best that we can do is to help everyone be educated about the subject,” said the Vice President of Internal Communications, Kelsi Johnson.

For Inlall, the wage gap is an issue that she knows all too well, having experienced it for herself.

“During my senior year of high school, I worked at a restaurant where I learned that I was being underpaid. My coworkers, predominately male, were all making more than minimum wage,” the finance major explained. “On pay day, I stood confused why my paychecks were always less than theirs even though we worked the same hours.”

“I confronted the issue with my manager who nonchalantly said I was making a big deal for someone who was unexperienced,” she continued. “I can still remember the look on my face when he said that.”

“My eyes filled with rage and I swallowed back tears. I was working just as hard as they were, but he did not recognize that. A few weeks later, I had decided to resign from the restaurant because I could not invest my time in a business that failed to see the value I brought to it,” Inlall added.

WIB President Berta Flores said that she believes women can overcome the wage gap and that they need to communicate their problems with it to make it go away.

“My advice would be to put out there what their values are and what their expectations are,” Flores said.

“I feel like, as humans, we always have the right to express our opinions and also how we feel, so I feel that Baruch students shouldn’t be afraid to put out there how they feel about the wage gap, specifically, and just be honest and be true to themselves, and if it’s something that they actually care about, then make it known.”

WIB does not currently hold any events or services about the wage gap, but some E-Board members said that they are hoping that the topic will be included in future events.