1960's: Equal Pay

April 8 is "Equal Pay Day", a holiday marking the number of extra days into 2014 the average woman has to work to earn as much as her male counterpart did in 2013. 

Full-time, year-round workers, women are paid on average only 77 percent of what men are paid; for women of color, the gap is significantly wider. African American women on average earn only 64 cents and Latinas on average earn only 55 cents for every dollar earned by white men.

In 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was passed, full-time working women were paid 59 cents on average for every dollar paid to men. This means it took 45 years for the wage gap to close just 18 cents -- a rate of less than half a penny a year. This narrowing of the gap has slowed down since the turn of the century.

I'll be glad when we no longer have to observe Equal Pay Day, but until then, we need to educate ourselves about the wage gap between women and men.

To help end pay discrimination Obama is trying to get the Paycheck Fairness Act passed.

The Paycheck Fairness Act will help enforce equal pay for equal work for all Americans. The bill would update the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a law that has not been able to achieve its promise of closing the wage gap.

 The Paycheck Fairness Act would make critical changes to the law, including:

• requiring employers to demonstrate that different wages are based on factors other than gender;
• prohibiting retaliation against workers who ask about their employers’ wage practices or share with others their own wages;
• permitting reasonable comparisons between employees within clearly defined geographical areas to determine what a  fair wage actually is;
• strengthening penalties for equal pay violations;
• directing the Department of Labor to collect wage information from various employers.                   

Credit: https://www.aclu.org/womens-rights/equal-pay-equal-work-pass-paycheck-fairness-act

Watch this one minute video 
on the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Complete the worksheet:

 " Women in the Workforce"