Women Merit Fair Pay

As more women become family breadwinners during this financial downturn, equal pay is not simply a matter of fairness; it's increasingly an issue of economic survival. Yesterday was Equal Pay Day. Once again, there's a significant gap between what employers pay women and men for comparable work.

On average, women earn just 78 percent of what men earn. In workplace terms, this means that the typical woman must work from January 2008 through April 2009 to earn what her male counterpart received in 2008 alone. And it's even worse for women of color. Furthermore, AAUW's new state-by-state comparison of wages found gross pay inequities across the board -- for college graduates as well as for the general workforce.

AT THE TOP OF our ranking is Vermont, where female college graduates age 25 or older make 87 percent of what male college graduates that age earn. At the bottom is Louisiana, where women over 25 are paid just 65 percent of what their male counterparts are paid. In Virginia, women college graduates age 25 and older are paid 67 percent of what their male counterparts earn, and those 55 and older are paid just 63.2 percent.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama on January 29, was a big step toward righting the wrongs of pay disparity. Named for a woman who for nearly 20 years was paid far less than her male co-workers with the same job and who fought for another 10 years to expose unfair pay practices, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act restored the long-standing interpretation of civil rights laws and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission policies allowing workers to challenge their discriminatory paychecks. The law canceled a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that would have dramatically limited the time in which workers could file a wage claim against their employers.

While we applaud the members of Congress who helped pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, more must be done to end the nation's wage gap. We now urge Sens. Mark Warner and Jim Webb to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182), a much-needed update of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 that would help eliminate gender-based wage discrimination and ensure that women truly earn what men do for the same job. As Lilly Ledbetter so rightly stated, the passage of the Ledbetter Act without the Paycheck Fairness Act "is like giving someone a nail, but not a hammer." When the House passed both the Ledbetter Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act earlier this year, House members demonstrated a firm, bipartisan resolve to attack wage discrimination on all fronts. Now it's time for the Senate to do the same.

The Paycheck Fairness Act is a comprehensive bill that would create stronger incentives for employers to follow the law, empower women to negotiate for equal pay, and strengthen federal outreach, education, and enforcement efforts. Together with the new Ledbetter law, this critical piece of legislation can help create a climate where pay discrimination is not tolerated and give the new administration the enforcement tools it needs to make real progress on pay equity. It would also prohibit employer retaliation against workers who inquire about their employers' wage practices or disclose their own wage -- a provision that would have helped Lilly Ledbetter win her case.

With a record 71 million women now in the workforce, wage discrimination hurts the majority of American families, in terms of both their economic security today and their retirement security tomorrow. In these difficult economic times, an unprecedented number of women are now their families' sole breadwinners, making pay equity even more necessary to family financial security and the nation's economic recovery. We urge hardworking Americans everywhere -- and especially women workers -- to demand that their senators vote to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. Yes, it's a matter of fairness to all American families. But it's smart economic policy for the country, too.

Ashland resident Laura Wimmer works in health education. Linda Hallman is the executive director of the American Association of University Women. She can be reached at (202) 785-7718 or executive@aauw.org.