Wage Gap

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.

The news just came out. The typical woman still earns 77 cents on a man’s dollar. The wage gap is the same today as it was ten years ago, according to Census Bureau data just released today. We’ve been stuck in park far too long. Read more »

Tomorrow, the Census Bureau will release new data on poverty, income, and health insurance in the U.S. in 2011. As we get ready to crunch numbers, we thought it would be helpful to take a deeper look at what these numbers tell us – and don’t tell us – about the wage gap.

The typical American woman who works full time, year round was still paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart in 2010. For women of color, the gap is even larger. This blog post provides details about the wage gap measure that the Census Bureau and the National Women’s Law Center use, factors contributing to the wage gap, and how to shrink the gap.

What’s behind NWLC’s wage gap figure?

The wage gap figure that NWLC reports at the national level is the same as that 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 describe the earnings of a worker at the 50th percentile – 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 the money people see in their paychecks. Working full time is defined as working at least 35 hours a week and working year round means working at least 50 weeks during the last twelve months.

The national wage gap data come from the Current Population Survey and include workers 15 and older. The wage gap is not broken down by occupation or industry, though data on earnings by industry and occupation for women and men are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A long holiday weekend is nearly upon us, and I’ll admit, my mind is wandering a bit today to non-work-related thoughts of beaches and barbecues. But before we all head off to celebrate a Labor Day free of labor, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the origins of this end-of-summer tradition.

According to the Department of Labor, “Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.” The first Labor Day was celebrated on September 5, 1882, in New York City, and was organized by the Central Labor Union, which later urged labor organizations in other cities to celebrate an annual “workingmen’s holiday” on the first Monday in September.

Of course, today we recognize that it is not only “workingmen,” but also millions of working women who have made great contributions “to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”  After decades of historic strides, women now make up about half of the U.S. workforce, and have entered into fields from manufacturing to medicine in numbers that many would not have imagined a generation ago. Read more »

That's me, right behind the President. Told you it was insane.

Screen cap from whitehouse.gov/live.

Yesterday, I got to meet President Obama. It was insane.

I attended a lobby day a few weeks ago to encourage Congress to find a solution to prevent the doubling of federal student loan interest rates, set to kick in July 1.

I showed up to the event, organized by Campus Progress, not knowing much about the debate except that the interest increase from 3.4% to 6.8% would mean $2,400 added on to my loan bill. Since then, I have kept working on this issue and tried to stay on top of it in the media. Then, three days ago, as the result of continued involvement with Campus Progress, I received a message in my inbox I never expected: I was invited to attend an event at the White House on student loans with President Obama.

I came to DC this summer to intern for NWLC and learn more about policies that impact women and families. Yesterday, while staring at the back of the Presidents head as he gave his speech about the importance of keeping student loan interest rates down, in a semi-existential moment, everything connected—and I realized that I was learning about a women’s issue at that very moment. Read more »

Welcome to another roundup! This week we have stories about gender-based wage discrimination for physicians, one popular website’s efforts to transform the male-dominated engineering field, and a 1963 PSA depicting Batgirl battling unequal pay…which is awesome.

The 49th Anniversary of the passage of the Equal Pay Act (EPA) 1963 has led to the internet re-circulation of this 1963 PSA promoting the EPA. The clip features Batgirl coming to the rescue of Batman and Robin. Before saving them, Batgirl takes the opportunity to voice her concern for gender-based wage discrimination: “I've worked for you a long time, and I'm paid less than Robin! Same job, same employer means equal pay for men and women!”

Unfortunately, Batgirl would be disappointed that 49 years after the EPA, American women are still a far cry from achieving equal pay for equal work. The wage gap has narrowed (in 1963, women earned 59 cents to every dollar earned by a man. Today, women earn 77 cents to a man’s dollar) but the 18 cent shift over 49 years just isn’t enough.Batgirl would also be up to her Bat Utility Belt in  outrage to know that on June 5, the U.S. Senate failed to move forward the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), a bill intended to update the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Learn more about how the PFA would strengthen the EPA. Read more »

This morning the Senate took to the floor to debate the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), a bill that would give workers stronger tools to combat wage discrimination, bar retaliation against workers for discussing salary information, and ensure full compensation for victims of gender-based pay discrimination. This afternoon the PFA failed to garner the 60 votes needed to end debate in a 52-47 vote that stuck to party lines.

While I was watching the debate, numerous Senators spoke in support of the PFA. They spoke to the many issues that matter in this fight – the (obvious) reasons women should be paid fairly, how we can boost women’s economic security by passing the PFA, how fair pay for women is good for families, and more. Senator Durbin made a point that particularly resonated with me. He simply said: protection for women and their families used to be bipartisan.

This clearly should be a bipartisan issue. The fact of the matter is that the typical woman working full time, year round is still paid just 77 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart, a figure that has barely budged over the last decade. Part of this 23 cent difference can be explained by occupations, work hours, and experience. But the truth of the matter is – much of the wage gap is entirely unaccounted for by these factors, and court cases show that discrimination continues to play a significant role in the wage gap. Read more »

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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• Or, forward this email and ask your friends and family to watch the video

During today’s Senate floor debate about the Paycheck Fairness Act Senator Heller (R – NV) called the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) a “trial lawyers’ bailout.” Yet Senator Heller acknowledged the persistence of the wage gap, saying “no one in this body should be so naïve as to say pay discrimination has been eliminated.”

After describing the working women in his life and claiming to be their committed advocate against pay discrimination, Senator Heller went on to say that the Equal Pay Act is sufficient to fight the wage gap. If that is true, why has the wage gap only narrowed by 18 cents since the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963? 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 »