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WHY SHOULD WOMEN
& MEN SUPPORT PAY EQUITY?
In 2005,
women in the USA earned only 76 cents
for every dollar earned by men, up
from 58
cents per dollar in 1963 when the Equal Pay Act was passed.
This means that the wage gap has narrowed by less than
half a penny
a year!
Here in North Carolina,
women earn 80 cents
for every dollar of men’s earnings. At North
Carolina’s current rate of progress, women will achieve pay equity
by 2048. 20-year-old women
currently working will reach retirement without achieving pay equity
with men.
Factoring in race along with
gender, the wage gap becomes even wider.
African
American women
earn an average of 66 cents for every
dollar earned by men.
Hispanic
women earn 54 cents.
Higher education levels do not
necessarily protect women from the wage gap. In 2001, women
with bachelor’s degrees earned only
75% of what men with bachelor’s degrees earned. Women
with master’s degrees
earned
72% of what similarly educated men earned.
For working
women’s families, the wage gap means an annual loss of $4000 per
family, even after accounting for differences in women’s and
men’s education levels, ages, hours worked, and location.
Pay equity
for women would mean many things:
Pay Equity
would lift enormous numbers of working women and their children out
of poverty:
-
For
single mothers,
pay equity would increase family incomes by
17% &
cut poverty rates from 25.3% to
12.6%.
-
Among
married women,
family incomes would increase by
6% &
poverty rates would
fall from 2.1% to 0.8%.
-
Equal pay would enable an
estimated 40% of women receiving
welfare benefits to leave welfare programs.
Women’s Resource Center in
Alamance County
1343 S. Main Street Burlington,
North Carolina 27215
Phone: 336-227-6900 Fax:
336-227-6993 Email:
wrcac@bellsouth.net Website:
www.wrcac.org
http://www.pay-equity.org/PDFs/PaycheckFairnessAct_April2005.pdf
http://www.pay-equity.org/info-education.html
http://www.cew.wisc.edu/equity/equity_newsletter.htm
www.rtpnet.org/ncwu/2004/AgendaAssemblies/DraftAgenda04-05.pdf
revised 2-17-06 |
