Equal Pay Day 2009
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Equal Pay Day symbolizes the point into the next year a woman must work to achieve pay equity. Her male counterpart works five days a week for 12 months, whereas she will have to work seven days a week for 16 months to earn equivalent wages. This year that date is April 28, 2009, Equal Pay Day 2009.
Nationally women earn 78 cent for every $1 man earns for full-time year round work.
This calculation does not include part time workers or seasonal workers. In fact if part-time workers were included the ratios would be much lower, as women are more likely than men to work reduced schedules in order to manage childrearing and other caregiving work.
Pacific Business News (PBN) reported along with national pay equity advocate such as the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) and the American Association of University Women (AAUW) stated that the wage gap has narrowed since 1979, when women earned 62.5 cents for every dollar men earned, but gains have sputtered in the last seven years ranging from a low of 76.4 cents in 2001.
PBN reported in their April 2008 story:
Hawaii women’s wage gap is 69 cent to $1 earned by men.
“What you may not have heard is that over a lifetime this wage gap adds up to astonishing financial losses for women. A high school graduate loses $700,000. A college graduate loses $1.2 million. A professional school graduate loses $2 million.”
Evelyn F. Murphy, former lt. Governor of Massachusetts and author of Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About It.
Pay equity is not just a women’s issue. It is a family issue. What would it mean to a household here in Hawaii if the women made 31% more money? What would it mean to that family’s retirement savings or their children’s education opportunities? The wage gap improved by one penny last year and has the AAUW put it that’s not change that’s chump change not real change.
For Wage Gap information and resources along with a gap calculator visit:
the Wage Project web-site at www.wageproject.org or
the American Association of University Women web-site at www.aauw.org.
Wage Gap Fact Sheet, http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/C350.pdf
