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Equal Pay Day 2013
Presidential Proclamation: Equal Pay Day
MORE ABOUT
EQUAL PAY DAY
Wear RED
on Equal Pay Day
to symbolize that women
and minorities are
"in the red"
with their pay!
The Fight for Pay Equity:
A Road Map
Download AAUW's Road Map showing both the legislative and executive action needed to enable women to bring home the pay they have rightfully earned. |
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  AAUW has announced the updating of The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap, which includes:
~ state-by-state rankings of the pay gap
~ the pay gap by age, race/ethnicity, and education
~ guidance for women facing workplace discrimination
~ resources for fair pay advocates
Also from AAUW: Find the gender wage gaps by state and Congressional district
The National Partnership on Women and Families has released a new infographic: 2013 Wage Gap Bracket: When Winning is Losing which can be shared on Facebook and has put together a Support Paycheck Fairness Pinterest board. See also their fact sheet listing wage gaps by states and by 50 major metropolitan areas.
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| The Pay Equity Coalition of Minnesota will have an event at the state capitol with the lieutenant governor presenting the governor's proclamation recognizing 30 years since full implementation of the State Employees Pay Equity Act of 1982. This act not only achieved pay equity for the state's largest workforce, of about 40,000 employees, but has maintained it with a built-in annual checkup. Also, this act--and one in 1984 covering all employees of cities, counties, and schools--passed on a bipartisan basis. |
| Other organizations will be issuing reports and updating information in observation of Equal Pay Day. The National Women's Law Center is holding a blog carnival all day on Equal Pay Day and a tweetchat at 1pm, with hashtag #TalkPay. This June will mark 50 years since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law. With women making 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, that's nearly $11,000 in lost wages every year. So bloggers participating in this year's Blog for Equal Pay are being asked to answer the question "What would you do with your $11,000 in lost wages?" Feel free to include policy analyses, personal experiences, reports, graphs, etc. in posts as well. NWLC will collect and publish links to the blog posts by 10 am on April 9, 2013. To participate in the blog carnival, e-mail the following information to djackson@nwlc.org by 5pm ET on April 5: your name and address, link to your post, and your Twitter handle, if you have one; posts submitted after 5pm on April 5 may be added to the blog carnival later on Equal Pay Day. Read last year's blog carnival. |
| Equal Pay Day Goes International: |
Equal Pay Day is becoming an annual event in other countries. View the campaign ad produced by the Swiss Women's Center and translated from German to English by the International Women's Media Foundation. Zi-kant, the progressive women's movement in Belgium, sponsors Equal Pay Day there with video messages each year. |
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Wage Gap Statistically Unchanged and Still Stagnant
While the gap between men's and women's wages has narrowed gradually over time, it has remained stagnant this century, as this graph from the Census Bureau shows (Total and Full-Time, Year-Round Workers With Earnings by Sex: 1967 to 2011, pdf).
This illustrates more than ever the need to strengthen and update the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.
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The wage gap remained statistically unchanged in the last year. Women's earnings were 77.0 percent of men's in 2011, compared to 77.4 percent in 2010, according to Census statistics released September 12, 2012 based on the median earnings of all full-time, year-round workers. Men's earning in 2011 were $48,202 and women's were $37,118, a difference of $11,084.
In 2011, the earnings of African American women were $33,501, 69.5 percent of all men's earnings, a slight increase from 67.7 percent in 2010, and Latinas' earnings were $29,020, 60.2 percent of all men's earnings, up from 58.7 percent in 2010. Asian American women's earnings at $40,882 dropped from 86.6 percent of all men's earnings in 2010 to 84.8 percent in 2011. The National Committee on Pay Equity's The Wage Gap Over Time shows how little the wage gap has changed in this century.
According to the National Women's Law Center:
- The wage gap persists at all levels of education. In
2011, the typical woman in the United States with a
high school diploma working full time, year round
was paid only 74 cents for every dollar paid to her
male counterpart. Among people with a
bachelor’s degrees, the figure was also 74 cents. In
fact, the typical woman who has received an
associate’s degree still isn’t paid as much as the
typical man who only graduated from high school.
- A typical woman who worked full time, year round
would lose $443,360 in a 40-year period due to the
wage gap. A woman would have to work
almost 12 years longer to make up this gap. A
typical woman working full time, year round who
starts, but does not finish, high school would lose
$372,400 over a 40-year period, an enormous
amount of money for women who are typically
paid $21,113 a year. A woman would have to work
over seventeen years longer to make up this gap.
(NWLC calculations based on the Current Population Survey. Career wage gaps assume a constant gap and are not adjusted for inflation. Gaps for educational attainment are for individuals 25 and older, other gaps are for people 15 and older.)
>> State wage gap figures from AAUW
>> Analysis of wage gaps by state and congressional district from National Partnership for Women & Children
>> More research reports and fact sheets compiled by the National Committee on Pay Equity |
AAUW's newest research report, Graduating to a Pay Gap, shows that a year after graduation from college, women are being paid only 82 percent of what their male colleagues are being paid - even though women are attending college at higher rates than men, graduating in greater numbers, and earning higher grades. The report also shows how the gender pay gap affects the student loan debt burden for women college graduates.
Using data from an Education Department survey of about 15,000 college graduates via Web or telephone surveys, the researchers focused on those who graduated during the 2007-08 school year and studied what they earned in 2009. The women made only 82 percent of what the men made, with women making an average of $35,296 while men made an average of $42,918. While some of the gap could be explained by factors such as career choice, when all variables were considered a 7 per cent gap remained.
The report is an update of the 2007 AAUW report, Behind the Pay Gap, which found women being paid only 80 cents for every dollar men were paid a year after college graduation. |
Pay gap exists just one year after college graduation
<< New report shows women made only 82 percent of what men made |
OFCCP Tackles Wage Discrimination
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs of the Department of Labor has issued a 4-page fact sheet "Advancing Equal Pay Enforcement: More Effective and Transparent Procedures for Investigating Pay Discrimination" outlining its recent actions intended to identify and remedy wage discrimination. |
| The Fight Goes On. Even though the Paycheck Fairness Act failed in the Senate on June 5, 2012 on a 52-47 procedural vote, we'll keep working to close the gender wage gap. (All Republicans voted not to consider the bill, while all Democrats and Independents voted for it; Sen Mark Kirk (R-IL) did not vote, and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) changed his vote to enable him to bring up the bill again.) See vote count here.
President Obama issued the following statement after the vote:
"This afternoon, Senate Republicans refused to allow an up-or-down vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act, a commonsense piece of legislation that would strengthen the Equal Pay Act and give women more tools to fight pay discrimination. It is incredibly disappointing that in this make-or-break moment for the middle class, Senate Republicans put partisan politics ahead of American women and their families. Despite the progress that has been made over the years, women continue to earn substantially less than men for performing the same work. My Administration will continue to fight for a woman’s right for equal pay for equal work, as we rebuild our economy so that hard work pays off, responsibility is rewarded, and every American gets a fair shot to succeed."
Both the Paycheck Fairness Act (S.84, H.R.377) and the Fair Pay Act (S.168, H.R.438) have been reintroduced in the 113th Congress. And the fight goes on.
As the National Women's Law Center shows in this video, the work of women isn't worth less. |
President Obama Details Efforts
To Help Women Economically
At a White House Forum on Women and the Economy on April 6, 2012, President Obama announced the release of the new report by the White House Council on Women and Girls, "Keeping America's Women Moving Forward," that details the progress the administration has made in initiatives to help women economically. He also acknowledged the continued pay gap, saying, "Overall, a woman with a college degree doing the same work as a man will earn hundreds of thousands of dollars less over the course of her career." And in an op-ed last week, he emphasized the importance of fixing that, writing "Closing this pay gap -- ending this pay discrimination -- is about far more than simple fairness, it's about strengthening families, communities and our entire economy."
The White House released the Equal Pay Task Force Accomplishments Report: Fighting for Fair Pay in the Workplace (pdf). The report details the significant progress that the Task Force has made to fight pay discrimination – including improving inter-agency coordination and collaboration to ensure that the full weight of the federal government is focused on closing the gender pay gap once and for all. |
The Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau published two brochures to educate employees regarding their rights under the existing equal pay laws and enable employers to understand their obligations:
>> A Guide to Women's Equal Pay Rights (pdf)
>> An Employer's Guide to Equal Pay (pdf)
Winners of the Equal Pay App Challenge The Department of Labor invited software developers to use publicly available data and resources to create applications for smart phones and other devices. The apps help provide access to basic information – e.g. typical salary ranges and skill level requirements for particular positions, advice on how to negotiate appropriate pay. |
If
we didn't have a wage gap, we wouldn't need this coupon! |
NCPE's
COUPON was featured in Jan-Feb 2005 Making
Bread Magazine ("Female Finance" column
on pages 20-23)! |
Join
the Fair Pay Campaign
to support pay equity 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. |
Myth Busting the
Gender Pay Gap
A senior program advisor at the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program details and busts five myths about the gender wage gap. |
White House Report
Notes Wage Gap
A White House report released in March 2011, Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being, addresses women’s present role in family life, education, employment, health, and crime in American society. The report, which is the first of its kind in nearly 50 years, also challenges policymakers, researchers, and advocates to do more to further the collection of gender-specific data in the future. It notes that women's gains in education and increased participation in the labor force have not yet translated into wage and income equity; at all levels of education, women earned about 75 percent of what their male counterparts earned in 2009. (NOTE: the 75 percent figure applies only to workers aged 25 and older and is a special calculation of weekly median earnings data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.) Women are more likely to live in poverty than men, and the economic inequities for women of color are even greater.
Summary Full report
Polling Data Shows Overwhelming Support
of Paycheck Fairness Act
In a 2010 nationwide poll of registered voters, 84% supported "a new law that would provide women more tools to get fair pay in the workplace." When poll respondents were told that the "law will also make it harder for employers to justify paying different wages for the same work and ensure that businesses that break the law compensate women fairly," 72% strongly supported such a law. This support was consistent across lines of gender, race, geographic regions, and political parties. See data from the . |
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GAO Report on Gender Pay Differences
At a Nov. 3, 2011 press conference, Sen. Bob Casey, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, former JEC chair, discussed the findings of a new GAO report, “Gender Pay Differences: Progress Made, but Women Remain Overrepresented Among Low-wage Workers.” The report about low-wage and less-educated workers shows that even in low-wage jobs women, who make up the majority of low-wage workers, earn less than their male counterparts. NCPE Chair Michele Leber was one of the speakers at the press conference. |
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| Updated
May 14, 2013
National Committee on Pay Equity |
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