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Equal Pay Day 2010: Women, 78 Cents, Men, $1
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Today’s the day when women workers finally catch up with the pay men received last year—the day we mark as Equal Pay Day. Being three months and 20 days behind men’s wages means women who work full-time still are paid, on average, 78 cents for every dollar men are paid. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median wages of full-time, year-round workers in 2008 stood at $35,745 for women and $46,367 for men.
The wage gap is even worse for women of color. In 2008, the earnings for African American women were $31,489, 67.9 percent of men’s earnings (a drop from 68.7 percent in 2007), and Latinas’ earnings were $26,846, 58 percent of men’s earnings (a drop from 59 percent in 2007).
The chart here shows the molasses-like movement in closing the wage gap. One way to speed up the progress is to urge lawmakers to support the Paycheck Fairness Act, which was passed by the U.S. House in 2009. It updates the Equal Pay Act by giving employees the tools they need to close the wage gap and providing the government with enforcement power to correct pay inequities. Momsrising has an action here to urge your senator to close the wage gap and back the Paycheck Fairness Act.
The group notes that given equal résumés and job experiences, mothers are offered $11,000 lower starting salaries than non-mothers. Yet fathers are offered higher starting salaries than non-fathers. More than half of women bring home at least half the family’s earnings—which means entire families suffer when women are paid less.
The average woman loses $700,000 in pay due to gender discrimination in her lifetime.
Kudos to President Obama who has established the White House Council on Women and Girls. The high-level body, made up of Cabinet members and heads of sub-Cabinet agencies, is charged with advancing the rights and needs of women, including equal pay. Declaring today National Equal Pay Day, Obama notes that “government can only advance this issue so far.”
The collective action of businesses, community organizations, and individuals is necessary to ensure that every woman receives just treatment and compensation….I call upon American men and women, and all employers, to acknowledge the injustice of wage discrimination and to commit themselves to equal pay for equal work.
And kudos to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who changed his Twitter icon to reflect Equal Pay Day.
Sen. Tom Harkin, who has sponsored the Fair Pay Act, and Lily Ledbetter, whose landmark U.S. Supreme Court case re-ignited the issue of equal pay, put the issue of wage discrimination in the broader context:
[W]e must recognize that the problem of unequal pay goes beyond insidious discrimination. As a nation, we unjustly devalue jobs traditionally performed by women, even when they require comparable skills to jobs traditionally performed by men. Why is a housekeeper worth less than a janitor? Why is a parking meter reader worth less than an electrical meter reader?
The Fair Pay Act would ensure that employers provide equal pay for jobs that are equivalent in skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
Civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height, who died today, early on championed the notion that the rights of women are fundamentally connected to issues of fairness for all Americans. As the New York Times put it:
Ms. Height is widely credited as the first person in the modern civil rights era to treat the problems of equality for women and equality for African Americans as a seamless whole, merging concerns that had historically been largely separate.
Height “embodied struggle, strength, determination, love and elegance,” says AFL-CIO Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, and her passing today is a reminder of how an injustice to one is an injustice to all.
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3 Comments
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It depends on what type of work. In construction labor, the men do more work except in handling heavy equipment. In other fields, sometimes the women are more capable and should be paid more according to ability.It is best not to get too interested or women may not be hired in certain jobs.
I’m supportive for equal pay for women 100%. My wife an Executive Chef experienced first hand most of her entire career earning wages behind men. It started from the first day in a kitchen as a pastry chef. The Paycheck Fairness Act is a piece of legislation that needs to be passed in Congress and signed into law by President Obama. But does the law have any teeth? What is needed in a law is punishment for employers that break the law and underpay women. Then, perhaps we will not have to celebrate Equal Pay Day next year in 2011. Michael Zullo, Upper Eastside Manhattan.
Where I live at, there are the old Kaiser Ship Yards. Women use to build war ships there during WW2. There are stories of how a woman went from being waitress to being a welder for the war effort. I also have heard of this one woman who didn’t want the war to end because she knew when the war ended, she would be out of a job. It is something how some people say women can do the same things as men, so they don’t deserve equal pay, yet without the mostly all woman workforce building ships, the US wouldn’t of won the war. You also have to look at their wages. The women got paid good wages for their work.
After the war, it seems as if there was a giant push to get women out of the workforce and to replace them with soldiers. Soldiers that were taught to take orders and face anti union indoctrination from the officers. Even today, on the Arm Forces radio station, you will hear Rush Limbaugh and other right wing, anti union people on it, but you will not hear a left wing, pro union person on it.
I have always believed in brotherhood. That includes my sisters. If we let them get discriminated against, than we will be next.
I still remember, vividly, how my wages were cut when Ronald Reagan was president. There is no doubt that the anti union and anti family wage people would do this again, even more this time, if they could get away with it.