SEARCH
Paycheck Fairness Bill Gets Hearing in Congress |
Where do the serious family budget discussions take place? The ones where you ask, “How are we going to pay this bill?” or “Can we really afford that?” Around the kitchen table.
Further, says Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill.):
Most families rely on the wages of women as well as men to make ends meet, and around the kitchen table men and women know that women’s wages are not fair or equal.
They are not fair or equal because women make just 77 percent of what men do, and for the second time in a little more than two months, a congressional committee examined the wage gap and the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 1338).
The legislation was first introduced 10 years ago by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), but it’s been bottled up by the Republican majority for a decade. Today’s hearing before the Education and Labor Workforce Protections Subcommittee followed a hearing in April by the full committee on equal pay. (Click here to read today’s testimony and view an archived webcast and here for the April hearing.)
DeLauro’s bill, which has more than 200 co-sponsors, would provide more effective remedies for women who are not paid equal wages for doing equal work by adding some teeth to the 1963 Equal Pay Act.
Says Subcommittee Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.):
Forty-three years since the passage of the Equal Pay Act women still make less than men doing the same work. The pay gap exists in every career field and every occupation.
Evelyn Murphy, president of the WAGE Project Inc., told the committee the wage gap could cost a female high school graduate $700,000 over a lifetime of work and that a woman with an MBA degree faces a $2 million shortfall compared to the lifetime earnings of a male with an MBA.
In a survey of 800 women conducted by the WAGE Project, seven out of 10 reported examples of unfair treatment relating to pay. In her testimony, Murphy said:
This wage inequality permeates our entire economy. Our current laws have not ended workplace discrimination. If we don’t something now—and it’s clear our current laws do not work—we pass on what women now lose to our daughters and granddaughters, and that’s a lousy legacy.
According to Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center:
Some wrongly dismiss this disparity as the product of women’s choices. The very troubling truth is that when women make the same career choices as men and work the same hours, they still earn less…Discriminatory barriers that women face in the workforce are a primary cause of the wage gap.
The consequences of wage discrimination are profound and far reaching. Pay disparities cost women and their families thousands of dollars each year while they are working and thousands in retirement income when they leave the workforce. Congress should act to ensure that the law effectively protects women from pay discrimination on the basis of gender
Click here to urge your representatives and senators to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.
No Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
