Today, April 9, 2013, is Equal Pay Day, which marks the four extra months an American woman would have to work in addition to the year 2012 in order to make the same amount of money as an American man made in the same calendar year. In 2012, women earned about 81% as much as men – that’s 80.9 cents to every dollar. And the wage gap only grows wider for women of minority race, with African-American women making 69% and Hispanic women making 60% as much as the average Caucasian male.
In 1963, the Equal Pay Act was signed into federal law, requiring that men and women be given “equal pay for equal work.” Back then, women were making 59% of what men were making – meaning that in 50 years, the gap has only closed 22%, with the rate of increase tapering off in recent years. Consequently, the National Committee on Pay Equity implemented Equal Pay Day in 1996. So we’ve got a cold, hard piece of legislation and countless awareness groups, and yet women still are not making 100% of what their male counterparts earn. This means there has to be evidence of lawsuits against employers, right?
In June 2001, 54-year-old Betty Dukes of California filed a claim of sex-based discrimination against her employer at Wal-Mart, lamenting unequal pay and promotions between men and women. Five other women across California, independent from one another, had the same story. Eventually, up to 1.6 million women joined the lawsuit, earning certification as a class action lawsuit in 2004. Betty Dukes and her million+ new friends made it through five years of hearings and re-hearings in the Ninth Circuit federal court all the way to the Supreme Court. Ten years after the original claim was filed, on Monday morning, June 20, 2011, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Wal-Mart – arguing the plaintiffs did not have enough in common for their case to even be considered a class action lawsuit.
But why are women still making less money than men anyway? One theory is that employers view women as more likely to take time off from work to have children, or even to resign from their job in order to raise their children than their male counterparts. Therefore, they are perceived as less reliable employees – simply because of the chance they might choose to start a family at some point in their career.
Now you might be wondering, if the wage gap is known – why aren’t more women fighting for equal pay? The sad truth might be that women are unaware of this pay discrimination. The aforementioned statistics are all taken from publicly reported information – but individual paychecks probably aren’t considered as such. So, if you don’t know for sure that your paycheck is less than that of a man in a similar job position because you didn’t see his paycheck, you wouldn’t have any reason to be upset nor to press charges.
So what happens now? Activists and awareness groups will tell you to write to your state senators (especially if you live in one of the grey-colored states on this map) and encourage them to make decisions in favor of fair wage legislation, and to join in the movement to raise awareness by attending and organizing local rallies. But I think the best thing to do is to start by educating yourself – be aware that gender-based discrimination exists, and know what your options are if you have reason to believe that you are a victim of pay discrimination.
And make sure you tell everyone you know.
Learn more about Equal Pay Day and the wage disparity at http://www.pay-equity.org/
A version of this article appeared at Feministing.com in April 2012.