April 28 ~ Fair Pay Day

Impressive signings in these two pictures (love the 1963 pocketbooks) but are you really content with the gain of 19 cents on the dollar in 46 years?   

January 29, 2009 President Barack Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and WHITE WOMEN MAKE 77.8 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR, Black women – 68.7 cents, Latinas 59 cents*.

 
June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, Women make 59 cents on the dollar (I do not have the racial breakdown but you can guess). 

This marks a day that needs to disappear from our calendars entirely.  April 28th is Equal Pay Day as it marks how long into 2009 White American women have to work to earn equally what White American men earned in 2008.  You can calculate your wage gap with this calculator and be sure to notice the drop down list box asking about race. 

It is an outrage that it is less for women, lesser yet for WOC and that feminists would even allow ourselves to be divided by race.  Maybe we should begin our activism by insisting on ONE FAIR PAY DAY – which should be the day it takes for Latinas to earn equally …

None the less, lets look carefully at the additional missing element is the FAIR PAYCHECK Act.  It is the needed counter part to the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and it has not been passed.  It passed the House of Representatives in January 2009 and has not been heard in the Senate.

We need the Fair Paycheck Act to:

• Prevent Retaliation; prohibit employers from punishing employees for sharing salary information with their coworkers. This will allow women to more easily and quickly identity learns if they are being paid fairly.
• Close Loopholes; require the employer to prove that the difference in pay is truly caused by something other than sex, like job performance.
• Establish Punitive Damages; enable plaintiffs who prove sex discrimination to receive punitive and compensatory damages, just as they can for discrimination based on race or ethnicity.
• EEOC; require the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission surveys pay data and set additional regulations.
• Reinstate Collecting Gender-Based Data; The last administration stopped the collection of gender-based data.  We must collect, calculate and make available wage analyses, with out it every woman is on her own with no way to prevent and systematically deal with wage disparity.

So it is no day to celebrate – it is a day to write to your senator.  Here is a very easy form to get this done and get back to making your (average of 78, 69, 59) 68.6 cents.

* Got an interesting note fro NWLC this AM stating that White women make 81 cents on the dollar and that 77.8 cents is the average for US women.  hmmmmmmmmm    white 81, black 69, Latina 59.  That is a 22 cent disparity in women in regards to race.  That is really disturbing.  Maybe we should be all mapping to the lowest - not the hi average of 77.8. 

Comments

[Valerie]

Just wanted to note that the 77.8 cents on the dollar figure depicts the wage gap between all women and all men. White, non-Hispanic women make 81 cents on the dollar when compared to all men. For more information on the wage gap, check out: http://www.nwlc.org/fairpay/

[Zoe Nicholson]

Dear NWLC,
Thank you. I wish it was stated more clearly on your site or AAUW, http://tinyurl.com/dn6luu that white women make 81 cents on the dollar.

Though 77.8 may be the average, it means that the race gap is even worse.
White 81
Black 69
Latina 59
As feminists, shouldn't we start at the bottom to include everyone?