Wage Gap

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably know that the wage gap in the U.S. hasn’t budged in the last decade, and that women still get paid 77 cents, on average, for every dollar paid to a man. One southwestern state is taking the lead on closing this gap. New Mexico – the Land of Enchantment – is the home of the yucca flower, the black bear, thriving Hispanic culture, and now groundbreaking fair pay legislation!

In New Mexico, women typically make only 79 cents for every dollar a man makes. African American and Hispanic women do considerably worse: at 60 cents and 53 cents, respectively. In an effort to close this gap, Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico signed the Fair Pay for Women Act into law on March 16, 2013. Read more »

To mark Equal Pay Day, NWLC's Fatima Goss Graves, Vice President for Education and Employment, and Becka Wall, Program Assistant for Communications sat down for a chat on the success we've had on equal pay – and what we need to do next.

Becka: Hi, Fatima! Thanks so much for sitting and chatting with me about Equal Pay. I feel like this has been such a long and uphill battle. Where does the fight for equal pay stand right now?

Fatima: Since we passed the Equal Pay Act, the wage gap has narrowed by 18 cents. And there has been some clear progress – no longer will you see separate gender-based pay classifications, for example. But the wage gap has not budged for a decade, so there is serious work to do.

Fifty years since the passing of the Equal Pay Act is a great time to look at where we are – assess how far we’ve come, and how far we have to go.

Becka: What are some of the major causes that contribute to the issue of unequal pay?

Fatima: Women are still paid less for the same job, and it’s impossible in some spaces to get salary information. Some workplaces actual ban women from talking about their own wages. Women are concentrated in occupations that pay less. There are also a number of barriers to higher, paid traditionally male jobs. And there is a continuing penalty for caregivers – studies have shown that women who are mothers are paid less than men who are fathers. Read more »

April 9 is Equal Pay Day –the day more than three months into the year when women’s wages finally catch up to what men were paid in the previous year. In “honor” of the occasion National Women’s Law Center is releasing fresh data and analysis on the persistent wage gap between men and women.

This is also a big birthday year – something actually worth celebrating – the Equal Pay Act turns 50 in June! But on the eve of that happy occasion, here’s another downer: As reported in The Wage Gap by State for Women Overall, 50 years in, the wage gap is still going strong all across the U.S.

Since 1963, when the Equal Pay Act became law, we’ve narrowed the wage gap by only 18 cents, and in the last ten years that gap hasn’t closed at all. For the last decade, the median annual earnings of women have lagged behind men – women working full time, year round have made roughly 77 cents for every dollar made by men working full time, year round. We’ve still got a whopping 23 cents to go before we close the wage gap. Even if the wheels of progress were to start turning again today, if we only close the gap another 18 cents in the next 50 years, we’ve got 64 years before the wage gap closes. Read more »

Equal Pay Day is fast approaching, and this year NWLC is excited to gather people in a virtual space to talk about equal pay issues. If you’re on Twitter, we hope you’ll join us!

On Tuesday, April 9, 2013 NWLC will be hosting a tweetchat from 1:00 – 2:00 pm ET to talk about equal pay and the wage gap. Our official chat hashtag is #TalkPay. Read more »

Haven’t been watching the Suits gender discrimination story arc? Catch up on the first two episodes here and here.

Last Thursday night, the dramatic Suits gender discrimination storyline came to an end, as the Pearson Hardman attorneys discovered an email from the head of Folsom Foods explicating his reason for failing to promote qualified women. It came down to pregnancy: he did not want to give women with powerful positions within his company time off for pregnancy, childbirth, and taking care of their children. In fact, one of the few women who was in such a position had undergone a hysterectomy months before her promotion. Our friends at Pearson Hardman won the day and the defendant company had to pay for a hefty settlement to make up for the discrimination over the years. Hooray!

From calling women “aggressive” and “difficult” in performance reviews to justify their non-promotions, to assuming that women employees would be mothers first and workers second, the head of Folsom Foods relied on some of the oldest stereotypes in the book. These stereotypes are part of the reason why the wage gap has remained stuck, with the typical woman earning 77 cents to the typical man’s dollar, for the past decade. Read more »

What a night, and what a speech!

On Tuesday, President Obama laid out an important economic agenda for women and families in his State of the Union address — expanding early education opportunities, advancing fair tax and budget policies, increasing the federal minimum wage, and passing both the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Violence Against Women Act.

This is a full and impressive agenda for President Obama's second term. But we're up for the challenge and we hope you are, too!

Please join us in thanking President Obama for his commitment to women and their families. Your voice will send a strong signal to the White House that it's on the right track.

What's our take on all of these key issues?

• Expanding Early Education Opportunities — President Obama's early childhood initiative would expand access to critical early learning opportunities for millions of preschool age and young children across the country. This would help many low- and middle-income women and their families who are struggling to afford the early learning opportunities that put their children on a path to success.
• Advancing Fair Tax and Budget Policies — President Obama called on Congress to pass a budget that replaces reckless cuts with smart savings and wise investments in our future. This is especially important to women, because millions of hard-working women are struggling to lift their families out of poverty and cuts in funding for public services have cost women hundreds of thousands of jobs. We also need a tax system that fairly raises the revenue required to make these wise investments and stave off deep cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs women and their families count on.

Suits is really going in on this gender discrimination storyline – are you as obsessed with it as I am? Last night, the drama escalated: in addition to litigating a class action against Folsom Foods, Pearson Hardman has the table turned on itself as an old partner from the firm names Jessica Pearson herself in a gender discrimination suit.

Here’s where it gets interesting: Daniel Hardman, the scheming lawyer leading the charge, relies on the same sexist stereotypes about women to make his case against Jessica. He accuses her of being jealous of the younger associate and of thinking less of female employees who choose to have children. Women in the workplace often get caught in this double-bind: either thought to be un-ladylike due their ambition, or accused of being not committed enough when they have children. Hardman’s argument also relies on an equally tired story about women managers discriminating against women in the workplace. Read more »

I’ve been a longtime fan of the USA network TV show Suits – it’s set at a (fictional) law firm in New York, Pearson Hardman, and focuses on the exploits of a witty college dropout who has never been to law school and the firm partner who had the audacity to hire him as an associate. Last Thursday night’s episode featured Pearson Hardman taking on a class action lawsuit accusing a fictional company, Folsom Foods, of gender discrimination: they failed to promote qualified women. One of the lawyers on the case noticed that when women were denied for promotions, the company used the following descriptors to justify the choice: “high-strung,” “sensitive,” “aggressive,” and “abrasive.” These women were being passed over for promotions for reasons unrelated to their performance or their ability to fulfill their job responsibilities – but rather due to stereotypes about women in the workplace. Read more »

Rocket ships are popular with the space kids who live at my house. Stomp rockets. Model rockets. Rockets made from empty paper towel rolls and popsicle sticks. No matter what type of rocket, there is always a countdown and there is always a blast off.

Today is the anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. What better time could there be to get moving on a state-of-the-art plan to rocket to fair pay? Our progress in narrowing the wage gap ground to a halt ten years ago, after two decades of steady improvement. If you're sick and tired of hearing that the typical woman is still paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to the typical man, do the 5-4-3-2-1 countdown with me of what it would take to finally close the wage gap:

5. Ensure that women have the same opportunities and encouragement as men to train for well-paying jobs, many of which are in fields in which women are currently underrepresented. Read more »

Four years ago today President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, restoring the law that existed for decades in virtually every region of the country prior to the 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. The importance of the Ledbetter Act cannot be overstated – in the last 4 years, workers have once again been able to challenge unfair pay in court and pay discrimination claims around the country have been restored.

But even four years ago at the signing of the bill that bears her name, Lilly Ledbetter said the following: “With this bill in place, we now can move forward to where we all hope to be – improving the law, not just restoring it.” Those words are especially true today. The most recent data shows that woman working full time, year round are paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. This is a statistic that is unchanged from not only four years ago, but this gap has remained the same for a decade. 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. A gap in wages occurs at all education levels, after work experience is taken into account, and it gets worse as women’s careers progress.

If we pair these disturbing statistics with the severe limits to existing laws and policies it is even grimmer. Workers are frequently left in the dark about wage disparities, a problem that is exacerbated by employers that penalize their employees for revealing or discussing wages. In addition, even when women somehow muster enough information to prove discrimination, the remedies are extremely narrow. This means that there are too few incentives for employers to voluntarily comply with the law, and engaging in pay discrimination can be simply an unfortunate “cost” of doing business. Read more »