Women Will Wait Until 2056 to See Pay Equity, Unless We Act Now
Emmelle Israel, AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, sends us this.
At the current rate, pay equity between men and women won’t occur for another 45 years, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).
Add in the past 48 years since the Equal Pay Act was first signed into law and you have an almost 100-year long struggle for basic wage parity—even longer if you reach back into history and take into account all the women who stood up for themselves when they noticed their male counterparts were paid more for similar work.
The enduring wage disparity between female and male workers prompted a series of forums on Capitol Hill regarding the gender wage gap, sponsored by Women’s Policy, Inc.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler was a featured speaker, along with Susan Meisinger of HRExecutive Online at yesterday’s forum, moderated by Women’s Policy Inc. President Cindy Hall and Rep. Gwen Moore.
Shuler shared with attendees a story about her first job working at a restaurant as a waitress, making only five cents above minimum wage. All the waitresses were women and all the cooks were men. Although the men were already paid more than the women, the waitresses had to pool their tips together and divide the money with the cooks as well. It was her “first
experience with wage, gender and workplace frustration.” Read the rest of this entry »
90 Years After the Vote, U.S. Women Still Seek Economic Citizenship
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Women won the right to vote 90 years ago today. As historian Christine Stansell points out, the seemingly “no-brainer” move to ensure women have the same political citizenship rights as men was contested in this country until 1984, when Mississippi became the last state to ratify the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
That’s 1984—19 years after the Voting Rights Act and 13 years after 18-year-olds got the right to vote.
Working women today still are fighting for complete citizenship—economic citizenship. The Joint Economic Committee yesterday released a report on economic advances by women over the past quarter century and found that despite a quarter-century of progress,
challenges remain. Certain industries remain heavily gender-segregated. In addition, millions of women are struggling to juggle work outside the home with family care-giving responsibilities.
Wage Gap Between Women and Men Bad, Women of Color Suffer Most
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The pay gap between female and male workers in this country got a hearing in a Senate committee yesterday. But you wouldn’t even know the hearing happened: The issue apparently doesn’t rank up there with the antics of drunk superstars or foolish golfers to get attention by the corporate media.
Right now, U.S. working women receive 77 cents for every dollar paid to a male worker. The ratio has remained nearly unchanged for years. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) has been pushing for more than a decade to pass a paycheck fairness bill, and yesterday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing on the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 12/S. 182).
