Equality Minus 23%

We all want girls to grow up believing they can be whatever they want to be. Girls’ empowerment slogans have found their way into pop songs, onto t-shirts and into girls’ hearts. Girls rock! Girls rule! Girl power!

But there’s some data out today that makes all that seem like magical thinking: the new wage gap numbers.

Equality minus 23%. Don’t try putting that on a t-shirt.

The wage gap for women has barely budged in over a decade, according to new data released today. The typical woman working full time, year round is paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to the typical man. This is unchanged from 2002, ten years ago. For women of color, it’s much worse, with the typical African-American woman paid 64 cents and the typical Latina woman paid 55 cents for every dollar paid to a white, non-Hispanic man.

In the nearly 50 years since the Equal Pay Act became law there has been a seismic shift in the composition of the workforce – today women are primary breadwinners (either a single working woman or a woman making as much or more than her husband) or co-breadwinners (making at least one-quarter of the family income) in nearly 64 percent of American families. A wage gap of 23 percent means women have that much less each year to put toward keeping their families afloat.

Today is also the day on which the Census Bureau releases its national statistics on poverty.

Poverty and the wage gap are closely related. They both affect women deeply – with women making up 59 percent of adults living below the poverty line in 2011.

For single mothers the wage gap is particularly devastating. Families with children under 18 who are headed by single mothers are far more likely to be poor: more than 4 out of 10 of these families are poor as compared to less than 1 out of 10 married couple families with children. These families simply cannot afford to make do with less. And they shouldn’t have to.

So what’s behind this nasty wage gap?

Women’s lesser earnings than men are the result of many factors including:

• occupational segregation,
• the lack of paid family leave, paid sick days, flexible workplace policies and workplace accommodations for pregnant workers, combined with women’s shouldering primary responsibility for caregiving;
• and discrimination.

Today, women make up a majority of those earning college and advanced degrees. But even one year out of college, women are paid 80% of men’s wages (PDF).

Maybe you have a daughter, niece, or granddaughter. Picture telling her that when she grows up and has a career of her own, she can expect to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars less than a man with the same level of education over the course of her lifetime.

Can’t do it? I can’t either. When I think about having this little heart to heart with my own daughter or with my whip-smart niece who face-timed me last week to tell me, “I love school! It’s awesome!” I see red.

If this is one awkward conversation you’d prefer to skip over, do this instead:

1. Support legislation to promote education and training for girls and women that will lead to good-paying jobs, which are often in fields that are nontraditional for women.
2. Support the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would make employer pay practices more transparent and give women a fighting chance at combating pay discrimination.
3. Support the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers who need minor adjustments to their job duties to continue working throughout pregnancy. 
4. Support paid sick days, parental leave and workplace flexibility.

Do it so that your daughter, granddaughter, or niece will know: she is not WorthLess.