Women Employed's first major public event, attended by over 200 women, was a meeting of 26 of Chicago's leading corporations to discuss fair employment policies for women.[3] In its first year, WE published Working Women in the Loop – Underpaid, Undervalued, an investigation that used 1970 U.S. Census data on wages and employment patterns to expose substantial inequalities between women and men. The study found that women made up 45% of downtown Chicago's labor force, yet earned only 25% of wages.[4]