Equal Pay Day Arrives April 24

On Tuesday, April 24, 2007, working women across the country will mark Equal Pay Day — the day when women’s wages will finally catch up to what men earned in 2006.

“Women have come a long way, but are still waiting for equal pay,” said Dr. Heidi Hartmann, an economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR). “In fact, at the current rate of progress, equal pay will take another 50 years.”

Equal Pay Day presents an important opportunity to persuade women to join the APWU, said Liz Powell, Northeast Region Coordinator and chair of the union’s Women’s National Organizing Subcommittee. “The disparity in pay is a vivid reminder of why women must fight for equality. And, simply put, unions help women bridge the gap.”

Women who work full time have median annual earnings of $31,800 — only 77 percent of men’s annual earnings of $41,300, the institute reported  in December. Women have made great gains in education, managerial and professional jobs, and business ownership, according to IWPR, but fair compensation continues to elude them.

Why do women earn less than men? Men and women tend to work in different occupations and industries, the IWPR reported, and some jobs, such as teaching, become female-typed, whereas others, that tend to be higher-paying, such as construction, become male-typed.

There are also dramatic differences in women’s economic opportunities according to race and ethnicity, the institute notes. For example, while white women earn 73.1 percent of what white men earn, and Asian-American women earn 80.8 percent of what white men earn, African-American women earn only 63.2 percent, Hispanic women only 52.4 percent, and Native American women only 59.8 percent.

The wage gap is real, but women’s earnings are improving, even when compared to men’s. Between 1979 and 2005, the report notes, the median annual income of women in the United States increased by 26.7 percent, while men’s decreased by 3.1 percent, when adjusted for inflation.

Unions Close the Gap 

Unionization played an important role in improving women’s wages, the institute found. “A large part of the growth in women’s wages over the past several decades is due to women’s rapid gains in formal education and labor market experience, accompanied by an increase in union representation in several of the occupations traditionally dominated by women (for example, teaching and nursing).”

Better-paying jobs and educational opportunities have also opened to women as a result of equal opportunity and civil rights laws, such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act enabled women to keep their jobs after childbirth and increase their years on the job, an important factor influencing wages, the report noted.

Ideally, improving the earnings ratio would involve growth in both men’s and women’s earnings, with women’s earnings increasing more quickly, the report concludes, as happened in 25 states between 1989 and 2004. “To foster continued change in this direction, states should consider taking steps such as strengthening the enforcement of existing equal opportunity laws; implementing pay equity policies in both the public and private sectors; and pursuing overall wage growth, especially for workers at the low end of the pay scale, through higher minimum wages and the encouragement of collective bargaining.”