Know Five Things

The Issue

• Today, April 28th, marks Equal Pay Day. Historically, women have been paid significantly less than men, in part because of the jobs they take and the time they take off to fulfill parenting and family obligations. Yet too much of the wage gap cannot be explained by life choices, education, years of experience, or other facts, which is why organizations like the National Organization of Women, American Association of University Women, and the National Committee on Pay Equity are hosting events nationwide to call attention to how pay discrimination is hurting women, families, and America.

Know Five Things

As you talk about Equal Pay Day, here are five things you may want to know about wage discrimination, lifetime impacts of unequal pay, and the status of current legislation.

1) Status Quo

• For every $1.00 earned by a man, the average woman earns just $0.78. [National Organization of Women]
• Equal pay day represents the day the average woman’s pay will catch up to a man’s total earnings in the previous year. For example, a woman working all of 2008 and through April 28, 2009 will equal the average man’s salary in 2008 alone. [AAUW]
• Best states to be a female worker? DC, Vermont, and California, where female workers make $0.85 to every $1.00 made by their male counterparts.
• Worst states? Wyoming, West Virginia, and North Dakota, where women earn $0.62, $0.65, and $0.66 respectively. [IWPR]
• One year after college, women are earning 80 cents to the dollar, a gap which widens dramatically over the course of a lifetime.
• Even after “controlling for hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors normally associated with pay, college educated women still earn less than their male peers earn...A large portion of the gender pay gap is not explained by women’s choices or characteristics.” [Beyond the Pay Gap]
• The wage gap hits minorities particularly hard. For every $1.00 earned by a white man, an African American woman earns $0.69 and a Latina woman earns just $0.59. [AAUW]
• Men of color are losing out too— for every $1.00 earned by a black man, an African American man earns $0.78 and a Latino man earns $0.66.

2) Progress is slow

• The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, at which point full-time working women were paid 59 cents to the dollar. This means in 44 years of equal pay legislation, the wage gap has closed just 19 cents, or less than half a penny a year. [National Committee on Pay Equity]
• Over the last six years, the wage gap has closed only 2 cents.
• Despite women gaining access to more sectors of the economy, women’s pay is less than mens in each and every one of the 20 industries and 25 occupation groups surveyed by the US Census Bureau in 2007.[US Census Bureau]
• At this point, even men working in female-dominated occupations tend to earn more than women working in those same occupations. [IWPR]

3) Families are Losing

• Most of the wage gap is not explained by women’s choices and actions. But the choice to have children has a significant impact on women’s wages over the course of a lifetime.
• Over a 15 year period, “the more likely a woman is to have dependent children and be married, the more likely she is to be a low earner.” [IWPR]
• Additionally, women who leave the labor market to care for children can expect lower wages when they return to the labor market. [AAUW]
• The U.S is one of only 4 countries that doesn’t offer paid leave to new mothers — the others are Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and Lesotho. Although not a direct wage, this lack of benefits compounds the lost wages due to motherhood. [Moms Rising]
• If equal pay were instituted immediately, it would result in a $319 billion gain for women and their families.
• Equal pay would cut American poverty in half, mostly impacting women and children.
• Not only that— as the recession continues, the unemployment rate among adult men is significantly higher than for adult women, at 7.2% compared to 5.9%. This means more and more families are relying solely or heavily upon a woman’s income.[American Progress]

4) Long Term Effects

• The average woman would gain a total of $210,000 over the course of her lifetime if equal pay were enacted (this number includes part time workers).
• When looking exclusively at full time workers, the average woman with a high school diploma loses as much as $700,000 over a lifetime of work.
• Women with college degrees lose $1.2 million, and professional school graduates may lose up to $2 million. [WAGE Project]
• The effects of these lost wages are compounded with lower retirement contributions, pensions, and Social Security benefits.
• In fact, when it comes time to retire, the median income for a woman is $15,615, about half that of their male counterparts. [Idaho Statesman]

5) What now?

• President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act on January 28, 2009.
• The Fair Pay Act amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ruling that the statute of limitations for filing suit against pay discrimination resets with each discriminatory paycheck. [Harvard Business]
• Yet another equally vital piece of legislation, the Paycheck Fairness Act, has not been made law.
• The Paycheck Fairness Act would strengthen current protections against wage discrimination, closing loopholes in current laws that allow employers to avoid responsibility for gender-based pay discrimination.
• The bill was passed by the House of Representatives on January 9, 2009, but died in the Senate. [National Committee on Pay Equity]

Additional Resources

“Why Aren’t We There Yet? An Equal Pay Day 2009 Primer on the Wage Gap.” Jessica Arons, Heather Boushey, Lauren Smith. Center for American Progress, 4-27-09. [Center for American Progress]

• Excerpt: Women attend similar kinds of colleges as men, outperform men academically, and are more likely to earn a professional license or certificate. Yet women earn less than men even within majors.

“The Gender Wage Gap: 2008.” Institute for Women’s Policy Research, April 2009. [IWPR]

• Excerpt: If part-time and part-year workers were included, the ratios would be much lower, as women are more likely than men to work reduced schedules in order to manage childrearing and other caregiving work.

“Behind the Pay Gap.” Judy Goldberg Dey and Catherine Hill, AAUW Educational Foundation, April 2007. [AAUW]

• Excerpt: One year out of college, women working full time earn only 80 percent as much as their male colleagues earn. Ten years after graduation, women fall farther behind, earning only 69 percent as much as men earn. Controlling for hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors normally associated with pay, college-educated women still earn less than their male peers earn.

“Women Deserve Equal Pay.” National Organization for Women, April 2009. [NOW]

• Excerpt: Women still are not receiving equal pay for equal work, let alone equal pay for work of equal value. This disparity not only affects women’s spending power, it penalizes their retirement security by creating gaps in Social Security and pensions.

Play Audio Clips

• Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, 4-27-09, CAPAF: “That a fifth of women in this nation are without any health insurance, incomes for women-headed households between 2000 and 2006 are down” [Audio, :56.5]
• Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, 4-27-09, CAPAF: “more women in the workforce are bearing a heavier burden for their families and for children.” [Audio, :14]
• CAPAF’s Senior Economist Heather Boushey, 4-27-09, CAPAF: “We celebrate ‘Equal Payday’ each year, because tomorrow is the day that women will have had to have worked to have earned what men did back in 2008.” [Audio, :24]
• Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, American Association of University Women Lisa Maatz, 4-27-09, CAPAF: “Critics often like to try and say that this pay gap is a figment of our imaginations; that it is just something that we have dreamed up out of the clear blue sky” [Audio, :40]
• CAPAF’s Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program Jessica Arons, 4-27-09, CAPAF: “We also know that women of color generally earn less than white women do in comparison to men” [Audio, :59.5]
• VP for Education and Employment, National Women’s Law Center Jocelyn Samuels, 4-27-09, CAPAF: “Lily Ledbetter won her case at trial and the jury awarded her 3.8 million dollars, because they found that the discrimination against her was so egregious” [Audio, 01:00]