Equal Pay Day was last Tuesday. April is the month that women finally catch up to men's pay from 2007. In other words a woman in general has to work all of 2007 and then through the month of April for their wages to equal what a man made in 2007. It is held on a Tuesday because this is the day of the week that women work plus the week before to equal what men made the week before by itself.
Equal Pay Day was started in 1996 to make people aware of the disparity in pay between genders. The gap is even wider for women of color.
So when Senators Clinton and Obama said that it was about gender(Clinton) and about race(Obama) in their speeches this week about the wage discrimination resolution that failed, they were both right.
I find it interesting that this day was observed the same week that the Senate voted down changing the law and length of time that a woman has to file a suit for wage discrimination, ironic and sad that they both happened the same week.
Why has this trend continued even after it has been brought to people's attention, why do so many think that women are not worthy of the same pay as a man?
What about our leaders do they not think it's important to protect women in the work force??
The link above will connect you to the pay-equity.org sight to show what they have done to draw attention to this issue in the past.
5 comments:
As soon as you disrupt the status quo (women getting paid less), you then have to deal with social reform (women getting paid more, and then threatening the status of the politician).
Since most politicians are white males and are more concerned about their pocketbooks instead of the people, passing this legislation does not benefit them greatly. In fact, it probably threatens their existence more than it will benefit them. I don't think this legislation failed because of womens' rights, gender roles, or lack of equality (I'm sure it addressed many of these issues). I think it failed because you are trying to pass a piece of legislation through a governing people whose pocketbooks are going to suffer.
Many people don't get into politics to serve, many people get into politics to change the rules so their companies or the companies that support them get richer quicker.
I think that many of the leaders realize that equal pay is important, however money talks. With most large companies having a lot of women work for them, it would cost them more money to pay their workers if they payed all women the same as the men. Rather than just pay women the same as men, these companies just push for bills such as this to be ignored.
This is an excellent example of a glass cieling because no matter how hard women try to succeed in their careers, they are still behind men. They are not able to reach the high level of salary that men in equal positions are able to obtain. This is really disheartening to me because as a woman I want to be able to make as much as men to support myself. I would assume that if I get married someday my husband will want me to be successful and to make as much money as possible in order to help support our family. So why is it that this still occurs? I would assume that most men are supportive of women making more money and women definitely make the issue known. Why has nothing been done about this?
i know this stuff still occurs today, but it still shocks me when i hear it. You would think that over all the years we would have put an end to this discrimination by now. How much longer are women going to have to trail men? The higher wage needs to go to the more experienced, more qualified person..either male or female....it should not be dependent upon gender
I believe that the lack of attention and consideration of the topic by the masses stems from the fact that in everyday society men and women often view themsleves as equals. Most senators and representatives in Washington are privileges white males whose wives probably are not employed. Therefore, they aren't likely to bring up women's issues let alone feel as though the passage of equal wage legislation is necessary. I think the only way to remedy this issue is to elect a more diverse representative body rather than the tokenism that currently exists in Washington. Perhaps with a wide variety of people serving in congress a larger percentage of minority based legislation would get passed.
Post a Comment