4-19-05, 9:47 am
When George W. Bush campaigned for election in 2000, he said he believed that women ought to receive equal pay for equal work. Over four years, no new policy, and an annual gendered wage gap that costs working families $200 billion later, women are saying, the refusal to act on this issue signals the depth of his concern. Pay inequality is especially hurtful for working families. A survey conducted by the AFL-CIO shows that 62 percent of working women earn half or more than half of their family's income. Almost 3 out of 4 women with children are wage earners.
This means that being paid less because they are women threatens the economic stabiltiy of their families and the health of their children.
According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research, if pay were equal, working women and their families would experience a dramatically improved financial picture. If married women were paid the same as comparable men, their family incomes would rise by nearly 6 percent, and their families' poverty rates would fall from 2.1 percent to 0.8 percent. If single working mothers earned as much as comparable men, their family incomes would increase by nearly 17 percent, and their poverty rates would be cut in half, from 25.3 percent to 12.6 percent. If single women earned as much as comparable men, their incomes would rise by 13.4 percent, and their poverty rates would be reduced from 6.3 percent to 1 percent.
One interpretation of these facts may be that corporate America relies on the government to subsidize its sexist wage policies through public assistance programs provided to poor working women.
Another interpretation of this data is that corporate America relies on sexist wage policies to boost its bottom line. Think of Wal-Mart, for example. Runaway profits and growth are in part fueled by discriminatory wages they pay to the women who make up a major part of their workforce.
But unequal pay doesn't just hurt women.
Unequal pay for women has a downward pressure on wages throughout the economy, especially as women are becoming a larger portion of the workforce.
More specifically, when men work in occupations that are still predominantly 'female occupations' – clerical workers, cashiers, librarians, child care workers and others in jobs in which 70 percent or more of the workers are women – they also lose by over $6,000 annually. Inequity costs both men and women doing 'women's work' that employ over 21 women and 4 million men.
Men and boys who are the children, brothers, husbands, boyfriends or parents of women who are unfairly paid do not see economic opportunities they might otherwise have. They have fewer chances for higher education, better retirement, and may even suffer with less access to health care.
Equal pay is a basic democratic question about how our society views the contribution women make and institutionalized injustice they face. Equal pay is about equality for women. But it is also a broad issue about economic justice for working families and the basic freedom from want or poverty that Bush and most of corporate America just doesn't get.
Until equality is mandated and enforced, women will continue to join labor unions in record numbers where union contracts rule out gender discrimination in hiring practices, promotions, and unequal pay. The proof is in the pudding: union women are paid 93 cents for every dollar men recieve; non-union women get about 69 cents. And the picture for union women is improving each year.
Fighting together for equality benefits us all.
