By the year 2000, women and their children will most likely shoulder all poverty in the United States, a professor of sociology from Drew University at Madison, N.J. said Thursday night, addressing about 60 people in the Paul Robeson Cultural Center.

La Frances Rogers-Rose, a social psychologist specializing in black women and families, spoke to mark both Ebony and Ivory Week and Women's History Month, said black studies instructor La Verne Gyant. She has worked in her field for 15 years and was editor of the book, The Black Woman, which she is currently revising, Gyant said.

The event was co-coordinated by the Black Studies Program and the Center for Women Students, she said. "We don't get enough black women speakers on campus," Gyant added.

Although black and white women have different histories it is now important for them to work together on certain goals, Rogers-Rose said. Talking about the history that gives a woman her identity is essential to honest communication, she said.

"We can't talk until we can sit down and talk about how my mama worked for your mama," Rogers-Rose said. "You can't ignore the real, serious differences between the history of these two women."

White women used to be very sheltered by male society, Rogers-Rose said. "But nothing in society ever protected the black woman," she added.

"The feminization of poverty is new to some, but a continuing reality to others," Rogers-Rose said. "Black women have never known anything but poverty in society," she said.

The poverty women face today is worse somehow, though, she said. She said other generations of black women had created "soul food" out of leftovers and gardens out of barren patches of land.

"We (black women) have a long heritage of creatively dealing with our poverty. I don't know that we're doing that today. We're just poor and homeless," she said.

Today, though, the problem of women's poverty is reaching more into the white community, Rogers-Rose said. Women are poor because they are paid less, and therefore, equal pay for equal work is one of the most important goals for all women, no matter what their race, she added.

In an interview after the speech, she said all women can work toward such ends as electing politicians sympathetic to women's issues, improving child care, guaranteeing equality in education and increasing the minimum wage. "It transcends race and class," she said.

Rogers-Rose said she was disappointed with the direction the country had taken in matters of discrimination based on race and gender. "What do we say about a society that has turned back the clock about 20 or 25 years on women and blacks and other people of color?" Rogers-Rose asked.

She added that men take care of each other in the workplace and in politics, but women do not seem to have such organization.

"Maybe we have not learned the game," Rogers-Rose said. "We don't have the confidence we need, it seems to me, in ourselves," she added.

Rogers-Rose urged her audience to remember that they will be the leaders of the future and warned them to use their education to be ready.

"Are you ready or are you looking for a job, are you just looking for a career?" she questioned.

Rogers-Rose visited the University in the fall and spoke for the Equity in Education series, said Gyant. "We decided to bring her back so more students could hear her," she said.

Rogers-Rose is a valuable speaker to have at the University, said Sabrina Chapman, director of the Center for Women's Students.

"She has important things to say and she says them well," said Chapman.