Posts Tagged ‘ paycheck fairness act ’

This is the Year to Close the Wage Gap

April 16, 2012
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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 it’s considered impolite. On top of that, women are subject to a steady stream of input about their careers that serves only to confuse and incite us and to obscure facts. Look no further than the recent blow up and sparking of a fresh round of “mommy wars” over Hilary Rosen’s comments regarding Ann Romney’s credentials as an economic advisor. Especially when it comes to working and mothering, we hear we should work, we should not, and that our children, our choices and even our chores, all contribute to our salary and stature. Is it any wonder the wage gap between non-mothers and mothers is greater than the gap between women and men?

There is legislation before Congress that could help.The Paycheck Fairness Act would, among other things, prohibit retaliation against employees who ask about or disclose their wages. The Senate rejected the bill in November 2010 but Senator Barb Mikulski and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro reintroduced it in 2011. The Paycheck Fairness Act would also strengthen the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which gives employees a longer window to file discrimination claims and was signed by President Obama in January 2009.

Three years ago, we may have had good reason to be in the dark about the issues, but if there is ever going to be a year when we can raise awareness about the gender wage gap and persuade Washington to help, this is it. Seven long months away from the general election and already the two political parties are desperately pursuing the “women vote,” with Mitt Romney scrambling to close a polling gender gap.

The former governor of Massachusetts is trying to distance his campaign from the anti-woman legislation and rhetoric that has marred the Republican primary race. His efforts include an attempt to paint President Obama’s job policies as bad for women – a claim Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and many others, reject. And, he is positioning his wife as his expert on all things women – which has resulted in his exclaiming women care about the economy. However the women, and men, in the two-thirds of all U.S. households that rely on a woman’s salary, already knew that. No doubt the GOP hopes to change the debate from hot button topics like contraception and abortion, to jobs and the economy. But these political advisors don’t give women enough credit. Because we know that reproductive rights and the economy are linked.

New research form the National Bureau of Economic Research outlines how access to contraception helps close the wage gap. When women have access to contraception and resources for family planning, they, as well as their spouses, can make informed decisions about education, career, family, and how to best manage all three. This knocks down barriers for women in the workplace and eliminates the excuses that fuel much of the biases against women at work.

Women make up half the workforce and if we’re shortchanged to the tune of $10,622, that’s bad for the economy. All eyes are on us in this election year. We can’t allow politcal rhetoric to cloud the real issues. Now is the time to enlist the support of our elected officials to move family-friendly legislation forward. It’s good for women. It’s good for our families. And it’s good for the economy.

This blog is part of the National Women’s Law Center and Moms Rising blog carnival for equal pay.

 

If I Were Santa

December 14, 2011
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Santa's gift bagIf 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 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. Fair pay is not a woman’s issue, it’s a family issue. An estimated two-thirds of all U.S. households rely on a woman’s salary at least partially.”

For All Women: The ratification of CEDAW

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an international treaty that supports fundamental human rights and equality for women around the world. CEDAW was adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly. To date, 186 of 193 countries have ratified the treaty. The United States has not.

For President Obama: The courage to stand up for women’s reproductive rights

Women helped President Obama get elected in 2008 and they can be expected to play a major role in the 2012 election too. In return, women need Obama to take a stronger stance on women’s rights, and in particular, women’s reproductive health – regardless of the pressures he’s facing from his opponents.

For the GOP: The Sanctity of Life

The US ranks poorly for infant mortality rates and maternal death rates; more than two women die every day from pregnancy related causes. Yet many lawmakers try to block women’s access to much-needed health services, supposedly  in the name of life. For Christmas, we want to give them the gift of truly honoring the sanctity of life – all life – and to see them work toward improving the health and life of mothers.

For Massachusetts: A woman Senator

Massachusetts has never sent a woman to the Senate. Although 51 percent of the U.S. population is female, women hold just 16.5 percent of the seats in Congress. That puts the US at 69th in the world for gender parity. We need more women in office.

For Victims of Domestic Violence: Hope

Domestic violence victims and their advocates need money to gain freedom from abuse, to protect children from abusive partners or ex-partners and develop public policy efforts related to domestic violence. Please donate and give them support and hope.

What gifts would you give? You can add to my list at The Skinny Scoop.

 

Three Ways to Honor Betty Ford’s Legacy

July 12, 2011
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Betty FordFuneral 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 said she became sensitive to while caring for and supporting her first husband, when he was unable to work.

The Paycheck Fairness Act was rejected by the Senate last fall but reintroduced this year by Senator Mikulski and Rep. DeLauro.  Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wrote in 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 Department of Labor to work with employers to eliminate wage disparities through better outreach and training.” Contact your representatives and ask them to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.

3. Help remove the stigma of addiction and illness. Perhaps Ford’s greatest legacy was her founding of the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California in 1982. She was a brave advocate for people suffering from drug and alcohol addiction after she was treated for chemical dependency and she recognized the need for gender-specific treatment programs.

Ford set an example for people suffering from addiction to seek help and made it safer for women, especially, to admit to having a problem.  She was also one of the first women to discuss breast cancer openly. We can honor her life and her work by continuing the dialogue on issues affecting women.

Why We Need the Paycheck Fairness Act

June 22, 2011
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Pay Secrecy at WorkYears 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 or strongly discouraged from discussing their pay with coworkers, per an IWPR/Rockefeller Survey of Economic Security, there is virtually no way to discover pay discrimination.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Walmart v. Dukes case presented data in the court room pointing to a gender-based pay gap at the giant retailer. But in a place where the evidence “suggests that gender bias suffused” the culture, pay secrecy would have made confirming that data a challenge for women on the job. And Lilly Ledbetter, for whom the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is named, worked at Goodyear for almost two decades before she received an anonymous note tipping her off to the fact she was paid less than men doing the same work.

The Paycheck Fairness Act which was reintroduced this year by Senator Mikulski and Rep. DeLauro after it was rejected by the Senate last fall, will help combat pay secrecy. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wrote in 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 Department of Labor to work with employers to eliminate wage disparities through better outreach and training.”

Contact your representatives in Congress and ask them to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.

*”The Gender Pay Gap: Have Women Gone as Far as They Can?” (Blau and Kahn, 2007)

 

 

What Wal-Mart Ruling Means for Women

June 20, 2011
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Betty Dukes and Wal-mart plaintiffs

Betty Dukes and Walmart plaintiffs

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 VP and I overheard the CEO discussing his new salary – well above what I was making.

Am I a wimp? A hypocrite?  Perhaps. But at the time, I felt hopeless that anything would change if I spoke up. I felt insecure because no one else was talking about these kinds of issues. I felt scared because I thought my resume could use a long stint and I had only been at the company a few years. I felt practical because I had heard the stories about women who complained and were labeled risks, bitches, troublemakers, and I wasn’t going to do anything to hurt my long-term career. I felt tough because I could take it. I felt helpless because I couldn’t afford a lawyer. I felt tired because biting my tongue was exhausting.

With some distance and perspective I realized the risk of staying silent was greater than the risk of speaking up. Hence, Hello Ladies. My experience is the reason I have so much respect for women like Lilly Ledbetter and Betty Dukes. It’s the reason I am so disheartened by today’s Supreme Court decision in the Wal-Mart v. Dukes case to overturn a U.S. District Court ruling that granted class action status to female employees of Wal-Mart.

The case was sparked ten years ago by Dukes, a Wal-Mart store greeter, and claimed women at the giant retailer were paid less than men, had fewer opportunities for promotion than their male coworkers, and were poorly represented at the management levels of the organization. This case also leveled accusations of a work environment that included team meetings at Hooters, requests for women to “doll up,” and the term “little Janie Qs.” to describe female workers. Wal-Mart had asked for a review of the District Court ruling that paved the way for a massive (1.5 million former and current female Wal-Mart employees) class action suit against the retailer for violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Supreme Court’s ruling had nothing to do with whether or not Wal-Mart actually discriminated against women. Dukes and the other plaintiffs are welcome to pursue their cases – just not as a class. Rather the high court ruled on whether the 1.5 million women had enough in common to be considered a class.

The New York Times reported on the ruling writing, “The court divided 5 to 4 along ideological lines on the basic question in the case — whether the suit satisfied a requirement of the class-action rules that ‘there are questions of law or fact common to the class’ of female employees. The court’s five more conservative justices said no, shutting down the suit and limiting the ability of other plaintiffs to band together in large class actions.

“The court was unanimous, however, in saying that the plaintiffs’ lawyers had improperly sued under a part of the class-action rules that was not primarily concerned with monetary claims.”

In delivering the court’s opinion, Justice Scalia wrote, “The second manner of bridging the gap requires ‘significant proof’ that Wal-Mart ‘operated under a general policy of discrimination.’ That is completely absent here, Wal-Mart’s announced policy forbids sex discrimination,” and, “In a company of Wal-Mart’s size and geographical scope, it is quite unbelievable that all managers would exercise their discretion in a common way without some common direction.”

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ginsburg wrote, “The plaintiff’s evidence, including class members’ tales of their own experiences, suggests that gender bias suffused Wal-Mart’s company culture.”

The complete ruling, a finely parsed examination of technical points and precedents, is widely viewed as a win for big business and a blow to women. If the court had ruled against Wal-Mart, the retailer could have faced billions of dollars in damages and the case would have paved the way for similar suits. Instead, the decision leaves women alone in their fight against discriminatory practices, steeling for a long, expensive, and sometimes nasty battle, or merely biting their tongue.

Ladies, it’s time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

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

April 12, 2011
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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 Department of Labor to work with employers to eliminate wage disparities through better outreach and training.”

The Paycheck Fairness Act was rejected by the Senate last year. We can’t let that happen again. We can’t let that happen because:

- Fair pay is not a woman’s issue, it’s a family issue.  An estimated two-thirds of all U.S.  households rely on a woman’s salary at least partially.

- The wage gap threatens our economic health. If American families are earning .22 percent less than they deserve, then they will have .22 percent less to spend on consumer goods and services.

- The wage gap stems, in part, from the biases working mothers face in the workplace. Forty percent of mothers are primary breadwinners and they deserve equal opportunities and equal pay.

- Wage discrimination can be difficult to address and to fight. We’ve seen evidence of that in the WalMart hearings. The Paycheck Fairness Act will help address those challenges.

Contact your representatives in Congress today and ask them to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.

 

 

2010 Political Review (Slideshow)

December 31, 2010
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Here is a look back at just a few of the political stories we were talking about in 2010. What do you think 2011 will bring?

Women’s Progress in Executive Suite Flat Fifth Year in a Row

December 14, 2010
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Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before.  

Women have made no gains in the corporate boardroom or the executive suite in the last year. Nor have women increased their presence among companies’ top earners, according to the 2010 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors and the 2010 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners released yesterday.

According to the report,

  • Women held just 15.7 percent of board seats in 2010 rep resenting a mere 0.5 percentage points above 2009.
  • Women held only 14.4 percent of executive officer positions, up from 13.5 percent in 2009.
  • And as far as earning the big bucks, in 2010, women executive officers held only 7.6 percent of the top earner positions, up from 6.3 percent in 2009.

And progress was flat as far as the number of companies with no women serving on the board of directors (more than 10 percent) and the number of companies with no women executive officers. This is the fifth year women’s progress has remained flat. This is what we are talking about when we refer to the glass ceiling. Women still face both obvious and subtle barriers on their way to the corner office.

In fact, additional research from Catalyst (Mentoring: Necessary But Insufficient for Advancement,) shows that mentoring, long thought to be an effective tool for advancing a career, is more effective for men than women. According to the data, “men with mentors had starting salaries in their first post-MBA jobs that were, on average, $9,260 higher than the starting salaries of women with mentors.” The data also shows men receive more promotions than women and those promotions come with bigger raises – 21 percent vs. women’s two percent.

What does appear to be an effective strategy for advancing women, according to the research, is sponsorship, when a senior-level person advocates for a woman inside the organization. The learning here is that the traditional diversity and women’s programs are not enough. They are a good start, but businesses must put some muscle behind their memos. It’s the same reason we need legislation to support fair pay. The Equal Pay Act and the Lilly Ledbetter Act represent progress, but they don’t solve the problem of unfair wages.

Businesses would do well to recognize the benefits of a diverse management team and take the steps to get there. Women are half the workforce and represent half the talent pool.  And doesn’t it just make sense that if a business is trying to reach a diverse (read not just white male) customer base, it should add different perspectives to its corporate thought process?

And so the wage gap continues…

November 18, 2010
By

Senator Ben Nelson

Let’s review:

  • White women earn just .77 cents , on average, for every dollar a man earns.
  • Black women earn, on average, just .61 cents for every dollar a man earns.
  • Latina women earn, on average, just .52 cents for every dollar a man earns.

(Source:  The Institute for Women’s Policy Research Compilation of Current Population Survey Labor Force Statistics, 2009)                  

Over the course of a lifetime, this gap adds up to:

  • $700,000 for a high school graduate
  • $1.2 million for a college graduate
  • $2 million for a professional school graduate.

(Source: National Committee on Pay Equity)

  • There are more women on the national payroll then men.
  • The typical American wife brings home 42.2 percent of her household’s earnings.
  • Two-thirds of all American households have a woman breadwinner (either full or partial).
  • Twenty-five percent of wives were earn more than their husbands.
  • There is no available data as to how these facts break down across Democratic or Republican women.

But that didn’t stop the mostly white, male Republican Senators from turning the wage gap into a partisan issue. Yesterday the Senate voted 58-41 against allowing debate on the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill designed to strengthen the Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

The vote split almost perfectly down party lines. Not a single Republican voted yes — not even Senators Snowe or Collins who voted for Ledbetter. Critics said the bill could hurt businesses by opening them up to rigid pay practice and lawsuits. Others said, the gender-based gap is based on individual choices – women leaving or going part time due to family obligations. The first argument is short-sighted. What will hurt businesses is a lack of diversity and a limited talent pool. The choice argument is flawed because it fails to acknowledge that these so-called “choices” are often driven by a lack of decent maternity policies, unaffordable childcare, inherent biases toward working mothers and inflexible workplace policies.

Only one Democrat went rogue and voted against the bill -Senator Ben Nelson, he of the Stupak-like amendment to the healthcare bill that severely limited a woman’s right to a full array of reproductive health options.

Shameful, absolutetly shameful for Washington to turn the economic security – of women – and their families-and turn it into a partisan issue.

Breaking: Paycheck Fairness Act Fails

November 17, 2010
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The vote on the Senate floor this morning regarding the Paycheck Fairness Act failed 58-41. We will have more on this later.

In the meantime, you can read the immediate reaction here and and see how your Senator voted here.

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