The Continuing Battle for Equal Pay

A moment of painful honesty: my male partner makes significantly more than I do. I don't even have righteous anger about this anymore, so much as it makes me inconsolably sad. It makes me feel desperate, sometimes prompts hysteria, and it certainly brings politics into my personal life in a way I wish I could avoid. I'd be lying if I said this doesn't upset me beyond explanation.

So this week, the anniversary of the signing of the Equal Pay Act by President Kennedy rang a little hollow for a gal like me. As President Obama pointed out in a statement on Friday, women today make up nearly half the U.S. workforce, and 60% of women work full time. Yet we're still relegated to making roughly 77 cents on every dollar a man makes. Over her lifetime, this means the average woman will lose a million dollars worth of potential earnings, simply because of the wage gap.

Of course, not all women make 77 cents to a man's dollar. Black women make 66 cents, and Latina women make 58. To put that in perspective, the general consensus in 1963 was that women made 59 cents to every man's dollar. That was the exact problem Kennedy was trying to resolve, though from the current statistics, things look kinda bleak. Sex discrimination cases are still rampant, and even when women enter college at higher rates than men, they continue to be paid less in the same types of jobs.

We can be thankful that President Obama's first signed bill in office was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but as we've written before, it isn't enough — literally or figuratively. Sign this petition to urge the Senate to take action on the Paycheck Fairness Act. This isn't about wanting to do better; this is about need.

Photo Credit: Photos8.com