Kirsten Gillibrand United States Senator for New York

When women get systemically shortchanged at work it holds back their entire family, and the middle class. The typical woman working full-time today is paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart and the wage gap is even larger for women of color.  The median earnings for women were $36,931 compared to $47,715 for men, and neither real median earnings nor the female-to-male earnings ratio have increased since 2009.

Mothers earn about 7 percent less per child than childless women. For women under 35 years of age, the wage gap between mothers and women without children is greater than the gap between women and men.

A recent report showed that for 111 occupations for which there was sufficient data to analyze, women earned less than men in 107, or 96 percent of these occupations. In the below breakdown of women’s earnings as percentage of men’s by occupation, it is clear how problematic the pay gap is, for example: Personal Financial Advisors: 58.4%, Secretaries and Administrative Assistants: 90.6 %, Registered Nurses: 86.5 %, Elementary and Middle School Teachers: 90.9 %, Accountants and Auditors: 74.9 %, First-line Supervisors/Managers of Retail Workers: 73.9 %, Retail Sales: 64.7 %, Chief Executives: 72.1 %, Physicians and Surgeons: 71.0 %, Lawyers:  77.1 %, and Human Resource Managers: 80.2 %.

We need to guarantee equal pay for equal work and end unfair pay practices.  Congress must pass the Paycheck Fairness Act to update and strengthen equal pay protections.  The Paycheck Fairness Act is legislation to close loopholes employers can use to shortchange workers, hold big corporations accountable for pay inequity, make it easier for workers to pursue back pay, and empower working women to be appropriately and accurately compensated for their work and value.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would require employers to demonstrate that wage gaps between men and women doing the same work have a business justification and are truly a result of factors other than gender. The bill would prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their co-workers. The Paycheck Fairness Act also would strengthen the Department of Labor’s (DOL) ability to help women achieve pay equity by requiring DOL to enhance outreach and training efforts to work with employers in order to eliminate pay disparities and to continue to collect and disseminate wage information based on gender. The bill would also create a competitive grant program to provide negotiation skills training programs for girls and women.

The gender wage gap doesn’t just rob women of a fair paycheck. It makes families less secure, and slows economic growth across the board. With more dual-income households than ever, and with more families relying on working mothers to make ends meet, one of the keys to economic growth and security for the middle class is equal pay for women.

Download a copy of The American Opportunity Agenda here