Equal Pay

Tomorrow, April 17, 2012, is both Equal Pay Day and Tax Day—which means it’s a very good day to focus on economic fairness and what achieving it would mean for women.

First, fairness also requires closing the pay gap. Almost fifty years after passage of the Equal Pay Act, the typical woman working fulltime, year-round continues to be paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid by her male counterpart—a loss of close to $11,000 a year at the median.To catch up with the wages her male equivalent had been paid by December 31 of last year, this typical woman had to work through April 17. Even after taking into account factors such as occupation, education, and hours worked, women still consistently earn less than men, and this pay gap translates into lower unemployment benefits when women lose their jobs, lower Social Security benefits when they retire, and less ability to meet their families’ needs.

Because more and more families depend in whole or in part on a woman’s earnings, the pay gap doesn’t just shortchange women. It shortchanges everyone. Yet the pay gap persists, in part because pay discrimination is hard to identify and hard to challenge. Read more »

 Are we living in 2012 or 1950? I pondered that thought a lot while reading some of the stories in this week’s roundup. Today we have some stories on a pregnancy-based firing in Texas, a Wisconsin legislator’s explanation of the wage gap, and more.

First up, in ridiculous news: a teacher in the Dallas, TX was fired for her out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

Welcome back to 1950!

Cathy Samford – a science teacher and the volleyball coach at Heritage Christian Academy – was fired last fall after disclosing her pregnancy to the Christian school she worked for. She and her fiancé, her baby’s father, had been planning on getting married later this year.

School headmaster Dr. Ron Taylor defends firing Samford, explaining the Heritage Christian Academy “expects their teachers to be ministers as well as educators,” and went on to add that “It's not that she's pregnant. The issue here is being an unmarried mother.” Read more »

Ah, April. That time of year when spring finally arrives and the wage paid to the typical female worker finally catches up to what the typical man was paid the previous year.

Let’s be real: unlike nicer weather and other hallmarks of spring, the wage gap pretty much, well, sucks. And while spring comes and goes, the wage gap has been with us forever, and has only closed by 16 cents since 1960. At that rate, the wage gap will take about eighty more years to close.

Every year we rally around a day that’s been stuck in April for some time now to “celebrate” women’s earnings catching up to men’s. This year, Equal Pay Day falls on April 17.

But really, there’s not much to celebrate. And that’s doubly true for women of color, whose Equal Pay Day falls even later in the year.

As one of NWLC’s online people, I’ve been helping put together some online equal pay efforts to drum up support for the need to close the wage gap. And in addition to our annual Blog for Equal Pay Day blog carnival (which you can still sign up to participate in, if you’re a blogger!) we’re trying a new medium this year: Twitter. Read more »

We’re gearing up for another blog carnival that’s just around the corner – our annual Blog for Equal Pay Day! We’ll be partnering with MomsRising this year to spread the message far and wide, but to do that we need some help from you!

If you’re a blogger, we’d like for you to join us in writing a blog post (or more, if you’re so inspired!) discussing equal pay and the wage gap. Today, women make just 77 cents for every dollar a man makes — that's an average of $10,622 in lost wages every year. For many women and their families, ending the wage gap would buy a year's supply of groceries, three months of child care, or six months of health insurance. It's time to stop discounting women's voices and paychecks.

HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO: Participate in our blog carnival by submitting a blog post! Focus your blog post on policy analysis, personal experiences, reports, graphs and more – the choice is up to you. Here are some ideas to get you thinking about your blog post:

• Interview your grandmother or other older relatives about their struggle to earn equal pay for equal work.  You can also write about your own struggle.
  
• If you earn minimum wage (or used to make minimum wage), tell us what it would mean for your family if the minimum wage or tipped minimum wage was increased.
  
• Share your hopes about equal pay for the future; or tell us what kinds of policy you’d like advanced on this issue.
  
• Write a letter to your daughter, granddaughter or any other younger women in your life about the importance of fighting for equal pay for equal work.

Both NWLC and MomsRising will collect and publish the blog posts into one spectacular blog carnival, and we’ll keep the carnival going on Facebook and on Twitter with the hashtag #fairpay.

Want more info on how to participate? See our full participation guide – including how and when to submit your post – after the jump. Still have questions? Just shoot them to me in an email at djackson@nwlc.org!

Read more »

For the last decade, the wage gap for women has barely budged – the typical women who works full time, year round still only makes 77 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart. As highlighted by a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, there is a gender wage gap in virtually all jobs. Out of 265 major occupations, women’s median salary only exceeded men’s in one – personal care workers. The wage gap also occurs at all education levels, after experience is taken into account, and it gets worse as women’s careers progress. All told, even when accounting for a number of factors that can be expected to impact wages, it still exists. In fact, recent research shows that more than 40 percent of the wage gap is still unexplained, even after considering educational background, occupation, industry, work experience, union status, and race.

Despite this evidence of persistent unfair pay, recent weeks have also seen two oddly optimistic articles about women’s earnings. Let’s see what they’re so excited about:

First, Anya Kamenetz tries to reconcile why women’s earnings haven’t increased while their levels of education have. She concludes that women’s earnings are falling behind because (1) they have kids, (2) they chose jobs that don’t pay well, and (3) they are not “bold” or assertive. The onus in her explanation falls for the most part on women themselves – though she notes the structural element of some of these pieces, her answer is largely about planning correctly and making different choices. Who knew it was so easy – women can just make different choices and they’ll be paid fairly! This answer ignores the fact that even women who aren’t mothers see a wage gap. It ignores the fact that “women’s” jobs pay less precisely because women chose them – because women’s work is devalued – and, as noted above, that women are paid less even when they do chose the same profession as men. It ignores the fact that women often get punished for being bold or assertive. And the idea that these women might face discrimination? Not even mentioned. Read more »

 This week’s been a tough one. I think we all know that. We started the week learning about the tipped minimum wage, stagnant at $2.13 since 1991, and what it means for gender inequity. Yesterday we dealt with a panel of five men testifying before a House committee about how birth control tramples their freedom of religion in addition speaking out against the Blunt amendment all week. And there was even more Senate obstruction on judicial nominations.

Sadly, I don’t have good news for you. After the jump are stories on low literacy rates and their impact on women, PETA’s latest ad, and some disturbing bills from the Virginia state Legislature. Read more »

Join the National Women’s Law Center and tell the Department of Labor that you agree that home care workers deserve the basic protections of the minimum wage and overtime laws.

The vast majority of home care workers—over 90 percent—are women, disproportionately women of color. They provide a lifeline for the elderly and people with disabilities. Their jobs are emotionally and physically demanding, whether they are helping a client to bathe and dress, encouraging a client to take appropriate food, medicine, and exercise, or assisting a client who may use a walker, wheelchair, or portable oxygen equipment to get to the grocery store or a doctor’s appointment. They allow frail elders and people with disabilities to stay in their homes for as long as possible by giving them the help that they need and provide families peace of mind in knowing that their loved ones are being cared for. Many home care workers are the primary breadwinners for their families and struggle to survive on median annual wages of less than $21,000 for full-time work – less than the Federal Poverty Guideline for a family of four. Read more »

The Supreme Court earlier this year prevented female Wal-Mart employees from forming a national class to enforce their rights against the retail giant. Despite evidence that female employees throughout the nation earned less than similarly situated male employees and were less likely to be promoted, and that Wal-Mart’s corporate policies and practices allowed for managers to use blatant sex stereotyping to make decisions about pay and promotions, the ruling prevented the women from having their case heard on the merits. Now, these women have changed their strategy to get their day in court and vindicate their rights to equal opportunity in the workplace. Read more »

Yesterday we submitted comments to the Department of Labor regarding its proposal for a new compensation data collection tool. You can read our comments here.

This tool would allow the Department of Labor to collect compensation data from federal contractors in order to identify pay disparities and potential discrimination. One-fourth of our labor force works for federal contractors. But it’s increasingly difficult for workers to identify pay discrimination and enforce their rights under antidiscrimination laws. Over 61% of employers prohibit or strongly discourage employees from sharing wage information, leaving workers unaware of significant pay disparities. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has drastically increased the obstacles that workers must surmount to enforce their statutory rights. Last, loopholes in equal pay laws and the failure of the Paycheck Fairness Act to pass the Senate make it easier for many employers to avoid antidiscrimination obligations.     Read more »

The wage gap the National Women’s Law Center reports at the national and state levels are the same ones reported by the Census Bureau – the median earnings of women full-time, year-round workers as a percentage of the median earnings of men full-time, year-round workers. Median earnings are the earnings made by an individual at the 50^th percentile – the worker right in the middle. Earnings include wages, salary, net self-employment income but not property income, government cash transfers or other cash income – so basically what people get paid for working. Working full time means working at least 35 hours a week and working year round means working at least 50 weeks during the last twelve months (This includes sick leave and paid vacation. School personnel are also included if they are returning to work in the fall). Read more »