It's time to adopt Paycheck Fairness Act
By Elizabeth Warren
Last weekend, I was looking for a picture I wanted to show my daughter, and pulled out a box of old photographs from a shelf in the basement. The pictures of my mother and my aunts were wonderful—old hairstyles, dresses with big petticoats and hats-and-gloves for going out. As we sifted through the pictures, I thought about how life had changed for women over the last fifty years. Women doctors and scientists, women union leaders and small business owners. I also thought about how life had not changed. Across the board, women still earn less than men.
When President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law in 1963, women earned 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man. While the wage gap has narrowed somewhat since then, women today still earn only 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. Over their careers, that means they take home hundreds of thousands of dollars less than men. For middle class families, it takes two incomes to get by these days, and many families depend as much, if not more, on Mom’s salary as they do on Dad’s. And for single-parent households, lower salaries make it that much harder to stay afloat.
The wage gap also compounds the nation’s student debt problem. Although women and men borrow roughly the same amount of money to pay for college, women only make 82 cents on the dollar compared to men one year after graduating. This means that as a percentage of income, many young women bear a greater student loan debt burden than young men. In an already difficult job market, with student loan debt at an all-time high, unequal pay compounds the challenges young women face.
It’s clear that making sure women receive equal pay for equal work is a key part of our work to rebuild our economy and strengthen America’s middle class. We need to focus on creating a level playing field to help working women earn what they’re worth.
More: http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/06/viewpoint_its_time_to_adopt_pa.html
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