Did you know that women still earn 78 cents for each dollar men earn? This is the reason Equal Pay Day exists.
Held April 14 this year, Equal Pay Day was started in 1996 by the National Committee on Pay Equity in an effort to bring light to the wage gap. Last year, it was set for April 8, also a Tuesday. Is Tuesday important? For the cause, it is, because it represents how far into a week an average woman must work to be able to match what an average man earns at the end of the previous week. Equal Pay Day is also always held during April because the month symbolizes how far into a year a woman has to work to achieve equal conditions with men.
While Equal Pay Day only started 19 years ago, the wage gap between men and women has been an issue for far longer. The Equal Pay Act was signed into law in 1963. At the time, full-time working women were making 59 cents for each dollar earned by their male counterparts. By 2014, the wage gap has shortened to 22 cents, with women earning 78 cents on the dollar, but it still persists.
While a lot of women only realize the wage gap well into their careers, the discrepancy actually starts right out of college, with women being paid just 82 percent of what men are getting after a year of graduating.
Many people attribute the wage gap to women by simply not asking for what they are due but the issue goes deeper than that. It's definitely good news that more and more people, men and women, are becoming more aware that the issue actually exists because recognizing that there is a problem is the first step to figuring out a solution.
But when will this solution come?
Definitely not this Tuesday, but it's coming.
Women helping women understand what they can do to make salary talk go their way is one thing, but reducing the wage gap could go faster if employers also participated in the effort. After all, a part of why pay inequality still exists is because employers let it. This isn't to mean that just because someone asks for a raise that they should be automatically given more pay but that wages should equate to the kind of work done, not at all affected by gender.
Photo: Thomas Leuthard | Flickr
