By Holly Fisher
Contributing Writer

Each year the wage gap closes by about a half a cent. But if you’re a working woman bringing home the bacon, a half a cent won’t buy much these days.

Women’s advocacy groups report that women today make about 75 to 77 cents for each dollar a man makes. African-American and Hispanic working women make even less.

At this rate, women’s pay won’t catch up to men’s pay for another 46 years or so. In fact, women lose thousands of dollars over their careers because of the wage gap; a woman who begins working at age 25 and spends 40 years in the workforce still comes out $523,000 behind her male counterpart.

To bring attention to the wage gap, women’s groups around the country will mark Equal Pay Day on April 20. According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, which started Equal Pay Day in 1996, the annual event is observed in April to show how far into each year a woman must work to earn as much as a man earned in the previous year.

Having Equal Pay Day on a Tuesday symbolizes the day when women’s wages catch up to men’s wages from the previous week. Because women on average earn less, they must work longer for the same pay.

Women are encouraged to wear red on Equal Pay Day because women still are “in the red” in terms of their wages.

Michele Leber, chair of the National Committee on Pay Equity, says Equal Pay Day is a public awareness event and many groups around the country march on state capitals, host workshops, forums and press conferences. Some sell Payday candy bars to men for $1 and to women for 77 cents, Leber says. The Business and Professional Women’s Foundation has 1,500 local organizations, many of them hosting “Unhappy Hour,” a social event in which men pay $1 for a drink and women pay 76 cents.

Jennet Robinson Alterman, executive director of the Center for Women, was not aware of any Equal Pay Day events scheduled in Charleston, but notes that the center hosts workshops and brown bag lunches on topics of financial management and budgeting.

Alterman believes much of the root cause of the wage gap is cultural. “In a corporate structure you have to negotiate and many women don’t have the skills. With my generation, it’s a reluctance to talk about money. With the (younger) generation, many women don’t have the training.”

The Center for Women often has professional development programs on negotiating skills and salaries. Another such program is slated for June.

Experts agree that education is key. The wage gap seems to have fallen off many people’s radar screens, so many may think it doesn’t even exist anymore.

“We need to do a better job of educating management and we also need to educate our politicians,” Alterman says. “And, most importantly, we need to educate ourselves about what our rights are and how to improve ourselves.”

Women’s groups are stressing that the wage gap is not just about women wanting more money; it’s about the economic wellbeing of the country.

“Women live longer, many women are on their own and many are heads of households,” explains Sherry Saunders, director of communications for the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation. “It’s not that women want to make as much as men and they’re whining, it’s in the economic interest of the country to support the family breadwinners, be they men or women.”

In 1963 Congress passed the Equal Pay Act in an effort to keep women from being discriminated against when it comes to pay. But that law stipulates equal pay for women and men doing the same jobs. The problem comes from men and women doing different work but in jobs that have equal value to a company. That’s where the term “comparable worth” is making inroads—essentially evaluating people on skill, effort, responsibilities and working conditions and then paying them accordingly.

The Fair Pay Act, which is before Congress now, would be an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act. It would focus on comparable worth, explains Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations in Washington, D.C., and would mandate that businesses track pay statistics by gender and job category.

“I think this would go a long way toward closing the pay gap,” Burk says. “Companies don’t like to be embarrassed and it may be that some companies don’t realize they are discriminating in this way.”

Another proposed bill, the Paycheck Fairness Act, also would put more teeth into the existing law. It requires more accounting and prohibits retaliation against women who file a complaint about unequal pay.

However, both Burk and Leber say the chance of the Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act passing during a Republican administration is slim to none. “It’s going to be an uphill pull in a Republican Congress,” Burk says. “Republicans, generally, don’t want any kind of mandates on business and this does have more reporting requirements.”

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