Womenstake, NWLC's Blog

Today, the Census Bureau released data from the American Community Survey, a survey that provides median earnings for men and women by state. Based on that data, NWLC has calculated the wage gap for each state. Some of our key findings:

• In 2012, Wyoming again had the largest wage gap, with women working full time, year round typically making just 63.8 percent of what their male counterparts made.
• Both Louisiana (66.9 percent) and West Virginia (69.9 percent) also had wage gaps of 30 cents or more. The gap in Wyoming amounts to $18,780 annually — equivalent to more than half of the typical woman's earnings in Wyoming in 2012.
• In 2012, the District of Columbia once again had the smallest wage gap — women working full time, year round in the nation’s capital, were typically paid 90.1 percent of what their male counterparts were paid. 

The best part about working here at the NWLC is that every so often, I get to venture outside of the office and do something really fun and different with part of my day. Yesterday, instead of my usual commute, I headed down to the Capitol to play a life-size game of Chutes & Ladders with some really adorable children, truly inspirational members of Congress, and early education advocates.

As our own Helen Blank notes in her Huffington Post piece, the sequester has caused 57,000 children to lose out on access to Head Start, and many families lack high-quality early learning in their communities. Stories collected by the National Women’s Law Center and members of the Strong Start campaign that were distributed to Senators today make it clear that a positive early education experience benefits children and families throughout their lives.

This morning’s event gave us a chance to put some really adorable faces on the lives that laws involving early education touch.

All photos courtesy Jeffrey Martin.

Senator Mazie Hironi, and Representatives Rosa DeLauro and George Miller talk with Jack about the importance of early education.

Census Bureau data released yesterday show that women continue to experience high rates of poverty and a nasty wage gap.

In 2012, the poverty rate for women was 14.5 percent, substantially higher than men’s rate of 11 percent. Nearly 17.8 million women lived in poverty last year.

Poverty rates were particularly high for families headed by single mothers – more than four in ten (40.9 percent) were poor. More than half (56.1 percent) of poor children lived in female-headed families in 2012.

The poverty rates for other vulnerable groups of women were also high: black women (25.1 percent), Hispanic women (24.8 percent), and women 65 and older living alone (18.9 percent).

The wage gap figures also paint a bleak picture for many women.

The cold hard facts are that women working full time, year round continue to be paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts, and the numbers are far worse for women of color, at 64 cents for black women and 54 cents for Hispanic women.

With women as primary breadwinners in over 40% of families today, women and their families simply cannot afford to make do with less.