NCPE logo
 
 
Home button
  
About NCPE button
 
Pay Equity Info button
 
Equal Pay Day button
 
What You Can Do button
 
Join button
 
 
© 2004-2008
National Committee
on Pay Equity
 
 
   
Next Equal Pay Day: Tuesday, April 28, 2009
About Equal Pay Day
 
 

Wage Gap Narrows Only Slightly

 

Women earned 77.8% of men's wages in 2007

Census statistics released on Women's Equality Day--August 26, 2008--show that the gap between men's and women's earnings changed by less than one percent from 2006 to 2007, narrowing only slightly from 76.9 to 77.8 percent. Based on the median earnings of full-time, year-round workers, women's earnings were $35,102, and men's earnings were $45,113. Median earnings for women of color are generally even lower, and all showed percentage drops in the last year. In 2007, the earnings for African American women were $31,009, 68.7 percent of men's earnings, a drop of more than 3 percent; Asian American women's earnings were $40,374, 89.5 percent of men's earnings, a drop of 3.5 percent; and Latinas earnings were $26,612, 59 perrcent of men's, a drop of .6 percent. NCPE's The Wage Gap Over Time table shows how little the wage gap has changed in the last seven years.
 

House passes Paycheck Fairness Act

By a vote of 247 to 178, the House passed the Paycheck Fairness Act on July 31, 2008. The credit for this victory for working women goes in large part to Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), who has sponsored the bill since its introduction in 1997 and has been untiring in her support of it.
>> Information and roll call
>> NCPE letter to House in support of Paycheck Fairness Act

 

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

Senate Republicans blocked action on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act on April 23, 2008. By a 56 to 42 vote--with all Senate Democrats and six Republicans in support--the measure fell short of the 60 votes needed to begin consideration of the bill. The Senate previously drafted the Fair Pay Restoration Act in response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, which held that employees must sue for pay discrimination within the current 180-day statute of limitations. The Senate now is acting on the same bill passed by the House in July 2007, which defines each discriminatory paycheck as starting the 180-day limit.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing on January 24, 2008 on the bill.
>> About the hearing

Supporters are contacting Senators who didn't vote for the bill from the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, Florida, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia. Nonresidents of those states may forward this eCard to friends, family, and contacts who do.

Join the Fair Pay Campaign to support this legislation. The Fair Pay Campaign is led by the American Association of University Women, the Feminist Majority Foundation, Legal Momentum, the National Organization for Women, the National Partnership for Women and Families, and the National Women's Law Center, with 250 other local, state, and national groups -- including NCPE -- joining them.

  • National Women's Law Center Co-President Marcia Greenberger told CNBC why the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is good for business. Watch the video.
  • Sen. Ted Kennedy appeared alongside Lilly Ledbetter on CNN to discuss the importance of the bill. Watch the video.
  • Marcia Greenberger spoke with Diane Rehm about pay discrimination. Listen to the broadcast.
  • The Washington Post and New York Times both came out with editorials in support of the Fair Pay Act.
Photos from the 2008 Equal Pay Day press conference on Capitol Hill
 

Michele Leber, NCPE chair, debates USA Today about the wage gap:

Old attitudes die hard: Discrimination prevents women from getting salaries they deserve

written in response to USA Today's opinion piece Why women earn less: Career choices, business ventures are bigger factors than gender bias

Important first steps to making pay equity a reality include:

>> Strengthening enforcement of the Equal Pay Act by enacting the provisions of the Paycheck Fairness Act, sponsored by Sen. Hillary Clinton and Del. Rosa DeLauro. The Paycheck Fairness Act would ensure effective remedies for wage discrimination and make it easier to sue on behalf of groups of women.

>> Passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, which would address the persistent problem of paying lower wages in fields dominated by women and people of color.

WAGE: Women Are Getting Even
WAGE Clubs:
Nationwide grassroots movement to close the wage gap

On Equal Pay Day, April 25, 2006 NCPE -- in collaboration with Business and Professional Women/USA (BPW/USA); the WAGE Project, a new grassroots organization dedicated to closing the wage gap, and other leading national organizations -- announced at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC a new nationwide grassroots movement designed to close the wage gap once and for all.

Through this movement, WAGE Clubs are forming throughout the country to mobilize groups of women to talk about the wage gap and to obtain the tools, support and momentum they need to get even at work.

The wage gap costs the average American full-time woman worker between $700,000 and $2 million over the course of her lifetime, according to economist Evelyn Murphy, president of the WAGE Project.

Speakers at the press conference, who discussed the current status of federal equal pay legislation and the need for multiple approaches to this long-standing problem, included members of Congress: Senator Tom Harkin, Representative Rosa DeLauro, and Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton; Michele Leber, Chair, NCPE; Roslyn Ridgeway, President, BPW/USA; Evelyn Murphy, and Annie Houle, Founder, The Maine WAGE Project.

The Department of Labor has abolished its Equal Pay Matters Initiative, removed all information about narrowing the wage gap from its Web site, refused to use available tools to identify violations of equal pay laws, and adopted regulations that deprive millions of women of the right to overtime pay. The Department seeks to abolish the Equal Opportunity Survey required of federal contractors.
If we didn't have a wage gap, we wouldn't need this coupon!
NCPE's 23% OFF COUPON was featured in Jan-Feb 2005 Making Bread Magazine ("Female Finance" column on pages 20-23)!
 
Updated September 1, 2008                                        website by Swerdloff Digital Design