Equal Pay

Mad about the vote?

Help spread the word about equal pay for women.

Just moments ago, the Paycheck Fairness Act failed to get the 60 votes needed to move forward in the Senate. Fifty-two Senators voted to allow it to proceed, while 47 opposed it.

For the thousands of you who sent emails, made calls and met with your Members of Congress on this very important bill, this is a huge disappointment. We thank you for standing with us, and we urge you to continue the fight.

In the wake of a disappointing vote, help us get the message out about the importance of equal pay for women by sharing this video:

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Yo, how hysterical is the Internet?  Have you seen the photo with the “Brick” iPhone case?

One of the reasons those memes are so funny is because they often depict people from another time - a period in history so many of us are familiar with only through a series of distant  images and associations drawn from movies, attic magazines, older relatives and our favorite substitute teachers. But THEN memes show these historical figures saying things exactly the way we would today!  LOL!  The Internet is so crazy!  It’s too much!

Except when it’s not.  In the case of fair pay, the irony is unfortunately too real.  Many of us think of sex discrimination as something that happened in the old days when women wore watches and talked on phones with cords, (Ok, ok, yes, we still do that today and maybe that woman is not actually from the ‘80s, but with fashions coming back these days, it’s hard to tell, and you get the point.).  Yet it’s still happening today, even in the age of iPhones and Blackberrys. Read more »

For nearly 50 years, federal law has banned the payment of unequal wages to women and men who perform the same job. Yet women today still make only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts – an improvement of only 18 cents over the last several decades. And for women of color, the gap is even larger.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would strengthen current laws against wage discrimination by protecting employees who voluntarily share pay information with colleagues from retaliation, fully compensating victims of sex-based pay discrimination, and holding employers more accountable under the Equal Pay Act. These proposals would finally move the ball forward on the wage gap that has inched along over the last 50 years and remained stagnant over the last decade.

In recent weeks, opponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act have put forth rhetoric that downplays the wage gap and mischaracterizes the commonsense proposals in the bill. To restore some reality to the debate, I’ve unpacked five absurd myths that have emerged as the Senate prepares to consider the Paycheck Fairness Act next week. Read more »

To flip an old phrase, the political is personal. And as a young woman in the beginning of my professional life, the Paycheck Fairness Act is very personal.

For those of you who don’t know, the Paycheck Fairness Act is a bill that would strengthen the Equal Pay Act by prohibiting employers from retaliating against employees for sharing information about their wages, improving data collection and enforcement by government agencies, closing loopholes that courts have opened in the law, and making it easier for employees to come together as a group to challenge discriminatory pay policies.

Apologies if that sounds wonky, but I promise you, these policy changes can have personal impact. Check out the wage gap in your home state (I hope you’ve had the chance to look at our beautiful state by state fact sheets on the wage gap). These female cents on the male dollar figures - 77 cents nationally, 76 cents in my home state of Illinois, 91 cents in Washington, DC - aren’t just arbitrary numbers. They translate into real money that never finds its way into your bank account simply because of your gender.

Did you know that a typical woman loses out on $431,000 in earnings over a forty-year period? That’s less money to pay back student loans, buy a house or car, send children to college, save for retirement, go on vacation, contribute to charity, or simply buy Ben and Jerry’s when it’s not on sale! Read more »

When I heard Alex Castellanos on “Meet the Press” contend that the wage gap is a myth a few weeks back, I choked on my green tea.

Data show that it persists across nearly all demographics and sectors of society. And equal pay for equal work seems like a non-partisan issue of fairness to me. But Castellanos wants to wave a wand and make those facts disappear.

Compared to my friends graduating this year, I feel pretty lucky that I have another two years before I enter the full-time job market. Bleak statistics on job placement for recent grads has me anxious about my future. Top that off with my soon-to-increase student loan rate (you’re welcome millionaires, enjoy your continued tax breaks) and my hope to continue my education beyond undergrad and my financial security is, well, nonexistent. Oh, and since I’m a woman, my new degree is very likely to earn me less than my male peers with the same degree starting year one, even though I’ve done everything right. Trust me, if I had a magic wand, I’d make the wage gap a thing of the past – but I don’t, and I’m worried. Read more »

There are currently two major pieces of legislation in Congress that would help close the wage gap. One is the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), which is scheduled for a vote soon. The PFA would strengthen current laws against wage discrimination by protecting employees who voluntarily share pay information with colleagues from retaliation, fully compensating victims of sex-based pay discrimination, empowering women and girls by strengthening their negotiation skills, and holding employers more accountable under the Equal Pay Act. The other is one that you might not think of: the Rebuild America Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage from just $7.25 per hour to $9.80 per hour, giving a raise to millions of women workers.

Each year, millions of workers struggle to make ends meet on minimum wage earnings. Roughly two-thirds of these workers are women. They provide care for children and elders, clean homes and offices, and wait tables. Read more »

It's go time!

The Vote is Coming — Call Today!

We need your help to call on the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Dial 1-888-876-9527 Today!

For the next 48 hours, the National Women's Law Center and organizations across the country are joining forces to turn up the heat on the Senate in support of equal pay. You can help: call 1-888-876-9527 today!

What's the rush?

We expect a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act in the coming weeks and we need to make sure our Senators hear from us now. For the next 48 hours we want to jam the phones to send a clear message of support for the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Can you take two minutes of your time to call your Senators in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act?

We will make it super-easy. This is all it takes:

1. Dial 1-888-876-9527.
2. Listen to the sample script and follow the instructions for connecting to your Senator's office.
3. Don't neglect your other Senator. Call back and make sure he/she gets a call, too!
4. Double your impact by forwarding this message to a friend.

If you haven't already heard...

The Paycheck Fairness Act would deter wage discrimination by updating the nearly 50-year-old Equal Pay Act, in part by barring retaliation against workers who disclose their own wages to coworkers. Read more »

Connecticut’s legislative session ended last night at midnight. Unfortunately, the Senate did not take up the minimum wage bill that passed the House last month, so many workers struggling to get by on $8.25 an hour will have to wait until at least 2013 to get a raise. (The Senate did act at the last minute to approve a bill permitting the keeping of reindeer year-round, though, so to any Connecticut readers who always wished for Rudolph as a pet, you’re in luck!)  

But all is not lost. As I mentioned earlier this week, bills to raise the state minimum wage are still pending in Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts, and an increase looks likely to be on Missouri’s ballot in November.

And in a very exciting development at the federal level today, Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Bruce Braley (D-IA) just introduced the Rebuild America Act in the House. Like its companion bill introduced by Senator Harkin, the bill would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.80 per hour over three years and then index it for inflation, and would also gradually raise the minimum cash wage for tipped workers from $2.13 per hour to 70 percent of the minimum wage. Read more »

77 cents.

That’s what the typical woman working full time, year round makes for every dollar paid to her male counterpart.

Just a few weeks ago, we “celebrated” Equal Pay Day – the day that represents how much longer the typical woman working full time, year round would have to work to be paid as much as the comparable man makes in one year. For the typical woman who makes just short of $37,000 a year, that means working three and a half months longer.

Three and a half months is a lot of extra work. Sadly, it used to be even longer.  In 1963, the year the Equal Pay Act was passed, the typical woman working full time, year round made 59 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart. By 1973, the wage gap reached its widest point since the Census Bureau began tracking earnings – the typical woman working full time, year round made less than 57 cents for every dollar made by her male counterpart. Now we’ve been stuck at 77 cents for about a decade. So while the wage gap has shrunk since the Equal Pay Act became law in 1963, it hasn’t come anywhere close to disappearing. 

While we’re still squabbling stateside about emergency contraception, women in London can now order Plan B online to be delivered to their home or office via bike messenger. (Note that we’re talking about Plan B, the “morning after pill,” not mifepristone, the chemical abortion pill that can end pregnancy of up to seven weeks, as Irin Carmon outlines at Slate.)

According to The Daily News, here’s how London-based women can obtain EC through this new service:

To get the emergency contraceptive in your hands quickly, the £20 (24 euros) service involves filling out a short online form that is assessed by an online doctor, with the prescription delivered by courier in as little as two hours.

I guess London didn’t want to be outdone by the vending machine in a university health center that distributes Plan B.

And here I thought it was handy that time I needed an urgent prescription refill the day I was leaving on a trip and was able to call my doctor’s office for a refill which was faxed over to my local CVS so I could pick it up on my way out of town. Read more »