Posts Tagged ‘ paycheck fairness act ’

Can You Afford to Lose $11,000?

April 9, 2013
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Can You Afford to Lose $11,000?

What would you do with $11,000? Women today earn, on average, just .77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That adds up to approximately $11,000 per year. The wage gap isn’t shrinking. Women’s pay for equal work has been holding at .77 cents since at least 2005. In 1963, when President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, women earned just .60 cents for every dollar a man earned. When he signed the legislation, Kennedy remarked, “Our economy today depends upon women in the labor force…It is extremely important that adequate provision be made for reasonable levels of income to them, for the care of the children which they must leave at home or in school, and for protection of the family unit.” And yet in fifty years we’ve only gained .17 cents. In 2009, when President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act he stated, “In this economy, when so many folks are already working harder for less and struggling to get by, the last thing they can afford is losing part of each month’s paycheck to simple discrimination.” And yet the gap remains the same four years later. And that gap is even greater for [...]

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News from Around the Web

January 24, 2013
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News from Around the Web

There’s lots of women-related news to report. And just when I was excited that two important pieces of legislation were reintroduced, wait until you read about the legislation introduced in New Mexico… On Tuesday, Senators Patrick Leahy and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) reintroduced the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The 112th Congress failed to renew the act which helped victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking access needed services, and it improved the criminal justice system’s ability to investigate and prosecute violent crimes against women. The latest version of the bill removes a proposal to increase visas for immigrant victims of violence, a sticking point for several Republicans in the past. Yesterday, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and Senator Barbara Mikulski  reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, legislation which will help close the gender-based wage gap. Women make, on average, just .77 cents for every dollar a man makes for equal work. The Paycheck Fairness Act prohibits employer retaliation for sharing salary information with coworkers and increases the compensation women can seek for pay discrimination, allowing them to  pursue back pay and punitive damages. Also yesterday, the Pentagon indicated it would lift its ban on women in combat. According to the Defense [...]

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For Working Mom, the Wage Gap is Personal

September 16, 2012
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For Working Mom, the Wage Gap is Personal

  Data from the U.S. Census released this week revealed the sobering fact the gender wage gap is not closing; the 2011 data is not statistically different from the 2010 data. Last year, the median earnings of women who worked full time, year-round was 77 percent of that for men working full time, year-round. That gap translates into approximately $10,000 less per year in median earnings. For women of color, the gap is even larger. On top of the gender-based gap, women’s wages are threatened by the “mommy penalty.” A report published by The University of Chicago Press highlights two studies which “find that employed mothers in the United States suffer a per-child wage penalty of approximately 5%, on average, after controlling for the usual human capital and occupational factors that affect wages,” and additional research that shows, “for those under the age of 35, the pay gap between mothers and non-mothers is larger than the pay gap between men and women.” Considering the fact more than half of American women who work are breadwinners contributing at least some part of the necessary income to maintain their households, the gap is quite disconcerting. And for me, a primary and sole [...]

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Simple Ways to Help Working Mothers

June 26, 2012
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Simple Ways to Help Working Mothers

It seems like everyone is talking about working mothers right now. That’s great if it brings attention to the legislation and workplace policies like equal pay, paid sick leave, parental leave, affordable childcare and flexibility that are necessary to improve work life for working parents. And outside of an act of Congress, realize there are some simpler things we can do to make the life of a working mother, and father, more manageable. A working mother is like a circus performer: juggler, tightrope walker, even a clown who paints on a big, fake smile to get through the day. Drop one ball or lose your balance and it can all fall apart. So it’s little things that may seem like minor inconveniences to many, that can create incredible stress for us. For example: Last minute notices from the schools. Nothing strikes fear in the heart of a working mother like the last six weeks of school, except maybe the first six. May and June are packed with school concerts, field trips, projects that require trips to the art supply store and end of year picnics. So when, at the end of May, I needed to book an overnight trip for work, [...]

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This is the Year to Close the Wage Gap

April 16, 2012
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This is the Year to Close the Wage Gap

Tuesday, April 17 is Equal Pay Day, again. Equal Pay Day 2009 was impetus for my starting this blog. That day I dropped my son at school; at my request he was wearing red – one of the ways activists observe the day. As he was filing into class, I turned to a group of mothers and noted how proud I was he was helping me observe the event. The women, including several who work outside the home, had never heard of the gender wage gap. I was shocked and thought to myself, “Hello ladies, you need to know this!” A blog was born. Back then, women earned, on average, just 77 cents for every dollar a man earned. Today women earn 77.4 cents. The current gap translates into $10,784 less per year in median earnings, and for women of color, the gap is even greater. African-American women earn, on average, 62 cents, and Hispanic women earn, on average 54 cents, for every dollar men earn. I can understand why some of my neighbors may not have been aware of the gap three years ago. For starters, women typically don’t talk about salaries. It’s frowned upon in the workplace and [...]

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If I Were Santa

December 14, 2011
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If I Were Santa

If I were Santa, I’d be making my list and checking it twice. And here are the gifts I would give: For Our Daughters: The gift of self-esteem and positive role models The mass media perpetuates a message that women and girls’ value comes from beauty and sexuality – and it affects us. Sixty-five percent of women and girls have an eating disorder. Eighty percent of the op-ed pages are dominated by men. The number of women in senior management positions globally has gone from 24 to 20 percent from 2004 to 2009. For Corporate America: More women in leadership positions There is a large, and growing, body of research connecting women at the tops of organizations to a strong bottom line performance. However, women comprise 53 percent of new hires, but only 37 percent of managers, 26 percent of vice-presidents, and just 14 percent of executive committees.   For Working Mothers: Flexible work arrangements … and a day of rest The life of a working mother is challenging. Flexible work arrangements give parents the ability to work more flexibly and better manage the challenges of work and family. For Working Families: Passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act According to [...]

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Three Ways to Honor Betty Ford’s Legacy

July 12, 2011
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Three Ways to Honor Betty Ford’s Legacy

Funeral services begin today for former First Lady Betty Ford who passed away Friday at the age of 93. Here are three ways we can honor Ford’s incredible legacy. 1. Support the Equal Rights Amendment. Ford was a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. She marched and rallied in support of the amendment which still has not been ratified. The Equal Rights Amendment was written in 1923 and took 49 years to pass Congress but it was never ratified because not enough states supported it and Congress sets a time limit for ratification. Last month Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and Senator Robert Menendez re-introduced the Equal Rights Amendment. As Maloney said in a press release, “The Equal Rights Amendment is still needed because the only way for women to achieve permanent equality in the U.S. is to write it into the constitution.  Making women’s equality a constitutional right—after Congress passes and 38 states ratify the ERA—would place the United States on record, albeit more than 200 years late, that women are fully equal in the eyes of the law.” Urge your representatives to support the bill. 2. Support the Paycheck Fairness Act. Ford was also a supporter of equal pay, an issue she [...]

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Why We Need the Paycheck Fairness Act

June 22, 2011
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Why We Need the Paycheck Fairness Act

Years ago, at my second job post-college, my friend and coworker asked me to share my salary. I said no, but she persisted. We were both about to have salary reviews and she argued we had no way to benchmark our raises if we had no idea what others in the firm were getting paid. It made sense, so we snuck into the stairwell of our office building to swap data in secrecy –we were under the impression we could be fired for sharing our pay. It turns out she was paid $1000 more annually than me. So while in reality our salaries were practically the same, at the time it seemed like a big deal. She gloated. I pouted. And I vowed never to share salary information again – nothing good could come from it. Not true. A new report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) titled, “Pay Secrecy and Wage Discrimination,” discusses how pay transparency might reduce the gender wage gap. Today, women earn, on average, 23 percent less than men. And 40 percent of pay inequity can be attributed to pay discrimination.* But with approximately half of all workers in the United States contractually forbidden [...]

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What Wal-Mart Ruling Means for Women

June 20, 2011
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What Wal-Mart Ruling Means for Women

I kept quiet when my coworker came into my office to fix my heater and told me, “I can keep you warm.” I ignored it when the guys in the warehouse whistled when I went to the soda machine near the loading dock. (I did ask HR to take down the sign on the vending machine someone had posted that said, “I am owed .69 cents.”) I merely scowled at the warehouse worker who asked me to step aside when I was lifting boxes one day. “I’m working here Sweetie,” he said. I didn’t complain the time one of my coworkers took a pocketknife out of my hands while I was dismantling a tradeshow display. “Girls shouldn’t use knives. They could get hurt,” he said. But I gloated when he sliced his finger a few minutes later. I did comment when one of the salesmen sent me flowers for Secretary’s Day – I was a Vice President. But the CEO and HR Director told me they just didn’t see any issue. I felt defeated after another sales guy told me how I could touch him, and used hand gestures to illustrate his point. I left when he was promoted to [...]

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It’s Equal Pay Day, Let’s Try This Again

April 12, 2011
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It’s Equal Pay Day, Let’s Try This Again

Today is Equal Pay Day….again. Equal Pay Day is the day we note women earn less than men for similar work. The day is always observed on a Tuesday in April because women would need to work a week plus two more days, or a year plus three more months, to earn what men earn. According to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, women earn, on average, just .78 cents for every dollar a man earns. And for women of color, the gap is much greater. The Equal Pay Act was signed in  1963 and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed in 2009. Clearly, they are not enough. If we don’t take action, the gap won’t close for thirty more years- and even then there are no guarantees. The good news today is that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand vowed to push for passage of  the Paycheck Fairness Act, along with Senator Mikulski. Gillibrand writes at the Huffington Post that the Paycheck Fairness Act, “would prohibit employers from retaliating against workers for sharing salary information with their co-workers. The legislation would also establish training groups to help women strengthen their negotiation skills, enforce equal pay laws for federal contractors, and require the [...]

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