Personal safety and financial equality for women are the issues that will come to the fore in two National Women’s History Month events scheduled for Tuesday, April 17, at MTSU.

Multiple organizations will commemorate Equal Pay Day with an information table from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the first floor of the Keathley University Center. Sponsors are the American Association of University Women, MTSU’s June Anderson Center for Women and Nontraditional Students and Murfreesboro Business and Professional Women.

Volunteers will distribute Payday candy bars, and participants are encouraged to wear red to highlight the fact that women are “in the red” compared with men.

Women earn only 77 percent of what men earn for doing the same full-time jobs in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The median income for college-educated women is $50,000, compared with $70,000 for men. In Tennessee, the median figure is $44,000 for women and $64,000 for men.

At 6 p.m., the June Anderson Center will sponsor Take Back the Night on the KUC knoll. The annual rally is intended as an act of defiance against violent crime.

Participants will be allowed to express their views on violence at an open microphone on the knoll. The rally will be followed with a march around campus and a candlelight vigil for the victims of violent crime.

Both events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the June Anderson Center at 615-898-5989 or jacwns@mtsu.edu.

— Gina K. Logue (Gina.Logue@mtsu.edu)