By Fatima Goss Graves
Spring came early this year for those of us living on the East Coast. Here in Washington D.C., one of the world’s greatest displays of springtime—the Cherry Blossom trees—peaked early, with the blossoms gone weeks before the start of the annual festival that celebrates their fleeting beauty. Unfortunately for women across the country, not all springtime traditions came early this year. Equal Pay Day—the date when a typical woman's wages catch up to those of her male counterpart from the year before—remains stuck in late April. This year we mark Equal Pay Day on April 17th.
American women still earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men—a disparity that has budged a scant 18 cents in 50 years. The average gap in earnings translates to $10,784 a year in lost wages, a sum that could feed a typical family of four for a year and five months, pay an average mortgage and utilities for over ten months, or cover child care costs for a year and a half. And the numbers are even bleaker for women of color. For each dollar earned by the average white male, a black woman makes just 62.3 cents, and a Hispanic woman earns a meager 54 cents.
At a time when forty percent of mothers are primary breadwinners, even as they continue struggling to regain jobs in the fragile recovery, it’s especially critical that the wage gap be closed.
Passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act is one concrete step that would help to close the wage gap. The commonsense bill would give workers stronger tools to combat wage discrimination, bar retaliation against workers for discussing salary information, and ensure full compensation for victims of gender-based pay discrimination. During the last Congress, this legislation fell just two votes short of overcoming a filibuster in the Senate, and it has been introduced again in both houses this year. Perhaps for those who have blocked its passage, fair pay is just an abstract principle. But for women and their families, it’s key to their economic security. After a decade of nearly no progress on the wage gap—and a half century of painfully slow, incremental progress—it is long past time for Congress to make this bill, and fair pay for every worker, a priority.