EQUAL PAY DAY

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April 15, 2015 (San Diego’s East County) - April 14th was Equal Pay Day.  The date was chosen to show how many extra days each year women must work to earn the same as men.  This year, we didn’t catch up with men’s earnings last year until April 14th.

In 1963, President Kennedy signed the equal pay act because women were paid just 59 cents for every dollar earned by men. But 52 years later, things have improved only somewhat.  Today, Women earn 78 cents for each dollar that men take in. 

Working mothers are paid just 71 cents on the dollar that men earn. That means the annual wage gap for mothers is the equivalent of 126 weeks of food, 6,600 gallons of gas, or 11 months of payments for a home mortgage and utility bills. 

For women of color, the disparity is even worse: 64 cents on the dollar for African-American women and 54 cents for Hispanic women.

California women fare better than the nation economically, but still not at par with men. In California women earned 84 cents for every dollar that men earned last year, which still leaves a wage gap of $8,183.

That’s why Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) has introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act. It helps close the pay gap by empowering women to negotiate for equal pay, closing loopholes courts have created in the law, creating strong incentives for employers to obey the laws and strengthening federal outreach and enforcement efforts. State-by-state data on the wage gap is available here


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