Good News for 17 Million Women: Fair Minimum Wage Act To Be Introduced Today

I write an awful lot about why it’s so important for women to raise the federal minimum wage, so I’m especially excited to head to Capitol Hill today for a press conference on the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative George Miller (D-CA) will introduce at noon. Introducing this crucial legislation is an essential first step towards fairer pay for millions of women across the country.

The Fair Minimum Wage Act would gradually raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour, increase the minimum cash wage for tipped workers from $2.13 per hour to 70 percent of the regular minimum wage, and index these wages to keep up with inflation. Women especially stand to benefit from this proposal because they are about two-thirds of workers earning the federal minimum wage or less – and they are the majority of workers in the ten largest occupations that typically pay less than $10.10 per hour. As new analysis from NWLC shows, women are at least two-thirds of the workforce in seven of those ten occupations:

Women’s concentration in such low-wage jobs is one of the reasons we still see a large gap between women’s and men’s typical earnings: American women who work full time, year round are paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts, and the wage gap is even wider for women of color. Giving 17 million women a raise – as the Fair Minimum Wage Act would do – would help women support their families and help close the wage gap.

Congress has raised the minimum wage only three times in the past 30 years, and its purchasing power has eroded dramatically over time; if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation since the late 1960s, it would be nearly $10.60 per hour today. A raise for our lowest-paid workers is overdue. I hope Congress will act quickly to pass the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013.