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What’s the Point of Equal Pay Day?

 Equal Pay Day, a symbolic floating date recognized since 1996 in a number of different countries to highlight the gender wage gap, signifies the number of additional days the average woman must work to achieve the same amount of pay as the average man in the previous year. This year in the U.S., Equal Pay Day is recognized today, March 24, meaning that women must work an extra 83 days before earning the same pay as men.

Another way of stating this discrepancy is that, in 2020, the average woman earned 82 cents for every dollar a man earned for the same level of work. Though it may not seem like much, this gap makes an incredible difference over time; the National Committee on Pay Equity estimates that, over a working lifetime, the pay gap can cost women between $700,000 and $2 million, including salaries, Social Security benefits, and pensions.

Equal Pay Day has evolved to track the pay gap for more than just gender. The Equal Pay calendar in the U.S. now also includes

  • AAPI Women’s Equal Pay Day – March 9, 2021 (85 cents per a man’s dollar)
  • Mother’s Equal Pay Day – June 4, 2021 (70 cents per a father’s dollar)
  • Black Women’s Equal Pay Day – August 3, 2021 (63 cents per a man’s dollar)
  • Native Women’s Equal Pay Day – September 8, 2021 (60 cents per a man’s dollar)
  • Latina Women’s Equal Pay Day – October 21, 2021 (55 cents per a man’s dollar)

It’s a positive sign that this symbolic date has been steadily moving earlier in the year. In 2000, Equal Pay Day was May 11, reflecting that women needed to work an additional 131 days to receive the same pay that men earned in 1999; by 2015 the date had moved up nearly a month to April 14. Last year, for the first time, Equal Pay Day was recognized in the month of March.

At the current rate of progress, however, women would not achieve equal pay until 2059. Furthermore, the pay gap is expected to widen again as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic.  In the first half of 2020, women accounted for 55% of job losses in the overall workforce, and women who remained at work did so at positions with disproportionally lower pay and higher Covid-19 risk. As many jobs became remote, women were also more likely to face the “caregiving tax” – either contending with the hefty stress and responsibility of fulfilling both childcare needs and career responsibilities, or being forced to give up their jobs altogether to assume the role of unpaid childcare and homeschooling. Women who left the workforce can expect to receive an annual earnings drop of 39% when they return to work – if they ever do – which extends the pay gap even further.

Some legislation has attempted to instill pay equity. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Equal Pay Act, which requires establishments to provide equal pay for men and women who hold positions requiring substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility. The law has since been weakened through the exploitation of loopholes and subsequent court rulings. In the time that the Equal Pay Act has been law, the gender pay gap has only closed by about 55%, or 22 cents on the dollar.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, first introduced in Congress in 1997, seeks to add procedural protections to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to further close the gender pay gap. The legislation has been submitted to Congress 13 times, but has yet to pass both houses and become law. The latest version was introduced in the House of Representatives on January 28, 2021 (H.R. 7) and the Senate on February 3, 2021 (S. 205).

 

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