Feminists Look For Real Change on Equal Pay Day

April 16, 2002

"When I joined NOW nearly 30 years ago, I never dreamed that the wage gap would remain wide open in the year 2002," said National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy. "Despite passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963, women are still not paid equally with men for the work they do."

"Wage disparity increases women's poverty, decreases women's spending power, and jeopardizes their retirement security by creating gaps in social security and pensions," Gandy said. "This not only affects women -- it reduces the income of any household with a female wage-earner."

"This is one area that has seen little progress since the sixties; the wage gap has only narrowed by 14 cents -- slightly more than one third of a penny per year since then," continued Gandy. In 1963, the year of the Equal Pay Act's passage, women employed full-time were paid on average only 59 cents to the dollar received by men, while in 2000 women were paid 73 cents for every dollar received by men. The news is even worse for women of color. African-American women are paid only 65 cents for every dollar received by white men while Hispanic women are paid only 53 cents to the dollar.

"While conservative think tanks in Washington try to explain away the wage gap, they can't deny the evidence that it continues to hinder women's economic equality," Gandy said. "General Accounting Office data from the Current Population Survey, compiled into a report called 'A New Look Through the Glass Ceiling: Where are the Women,' shows that wage disparity between women and men has even widened in some industries in the past several years." The GAO compiled data regarding the ten industries that employ 71 percent of U.S. women workers and 73 percent of U.S. women managers. The pay gap between full-time male and female managers widened between 1995 and 2000 in seven of the ten industries examined.

"The wage gap is bad for women, bad for families, and bad for the economy," Gandy said. According to a 1999 report by the AFL-CIO and the Institute for Women's Policy Research called "Equal Pay for Working Families: National and State Data on Pay Gap and Its Costs", if women received the same pay as men who work the same number of hours, have the same education, union status, are the same age, and live in the same region of the country, their annual income would rise by $4,000 and the number of families living in poverty would be cut in half. "Working families would gain an astounding $200 billion in family income annually," Gandy said. "This kind of economic stimulus would truly benefit the economy, unlike the tax cut for millionaires the Bush administration wants to make permanent."

"We've heard the rhetoric, we know the numbers. What women need now is action," Gandy said. "Members of Congress must unite across party lines to eliminate the wage gap by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Pay Equity Act. Year after year Congress has talked about the importance of equal pay. Enough talk. Lawmakers would do well to follow the lead of Rep. Rosa De Lauro, D-Conn., Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and work to pass these bills."

Click here to read the Pay Equity Fact Sheet

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