(Not So) Happy Equal Pay Day
April 12, 2011 No Comments
While Equal Pay Day sounds like something women can celebrate, it’s actually the day where women’s wages finally catch up to the men’s. On April 12, 2011 women have finally earned what the men made last year, by working an additional 102 days.
Although women can feel some sense of satisfaction considering the great strides that have been taken to fight for their right to financial equality, they no longer want to play the game of cat and mouse.
There has been legislation passed on this issue, but it’s half-assed at best. Politicians can pat themselves on the back for passing the Equal Pay Act, but they haven’t yet been able to pull the trigger on the bill that can enact real change. As Progress Illinois reports, women strongly believe that passing the Paycheck Fairness Act will come through where the Equal Pay Act falls short. When signing an equal pay bill in 2009, President Obama said (and rightly so), “Equal pay is a family issue.”
Damn straight it is. Some may want to argue that change, especially within the legal system, is a gradual process. But I think we need to wake up and realize, as the Jackson Sun article cleverly points out, that women have been pushing for equal pay even before Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a voice to women’s struggles with discrimination in the workplace.
If it doesn’t make you stop and think when you read that women get paid 77 cents to every dollar a man makes, it’s bone-chilling when you read that “the average 25-year-old woman who works full-time, year-round for 40 years will earn $523,000 less than the average 25-year-old man who does the same,” according to the Institute for Women’s Policy. The numbers don’t lie. This is far from an insignificant wage gap, especially when we’re talking about a woman’s quality of life being affected from what seems like a small discrepancy.
I look forward to the day when there is no day deemed to be “Equal Pay Day” because this will mean that women have finally been given what they’ve always deserved.
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