(Un)Happy Equal Pay Day

Female? Congratulations, you just caught up to your coworkers earnings … from last year.

This week, the Senate considers the Lilly Ledbetter-inspired Fair Pay Restoration Act, allowing complaints of documented pay discrimination to count each and every discriminatory paycheck as a separate act of discrimination. [Yahoo]

If the Senate passes the bill, it would overturn a Supreme Court decision which drastically limited the ability of victims of pay discrimination to sue their employers.

The timing couldn’t be better: Equal Pay Day is this week. Tuesday marks the date of “how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year.” [NCPE]

That’s right- 45 years after Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make. [NOW]

Women of color are even worse off. Latina women earn only 59 percent of the average white male salary, African American women earn 72 percent, and Asian American women earn 93 percent.

Lifelong impacts of this pay gap are even more serious. One study estimated that women earn $700,000 to $2 million less than men in wages over a lifetime. This significantly reduces their ability to provide for their families and save for retirement.

Women’s wages are starting to rise in all states, but at the present rate of progress, it will take 50 years to close the wage gap nationwide.

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