The Gender Pay Gap: Who Pays?
Women comprise almost half of the US labor workforce and represent a growing number of primary breadwinner's for American families. Unfortunately, statistics consistently demonstrate that a gender earnings gap persists even when variables such as experience, education, industry and hours worked are taken into account.
The result affects not just women, but everyone who depends upon those women and interacts with them. When women are paid less than their male counterparts this impacts their family and household and trickles down into their communities.
There are five major federal laws addressing equal pay and compensation including the Equal Pay Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, Executive Order 11246 and the National Labor Relations Act.
However even with this legislation in place, the practice continues and the gender pay gap persists. The problem is not going unnoticed and there's been a push at the star and federal level to address this issue.
The Paycheck Fairness Act, S.B. 862 currently pending in the Senate committee, aims to strengthen the Equal Pay Act by amending it to allow for compensatory and punitive damages, class actions for pay inequity, and to establish prohibitions against retaliation towards workers who share salary information. In addition, The Act would require that employers who claim that pay differentials are based on factors "other than sex" demonstrate that those alleged factors are indeed related to job performance, consistent with business necessity and account for the entire reason for the pay differential.
This is however not the first attempt to amend the equal pay act and two similar versions of this bill have previously failed to pass the Senate. Perhaps as a result of these failures to strengthen federal legislation, state legislators are starting to take action at the local level.
On January 1, 2016 the state of California enacted a Fair Pay Act, which some commentators have referred to as the most aggressive and strict equal pay law in the country. The act requires employers to pay both genders equally for "substantially similar work". Globalized all workers in California, regardless of employer size or where they are based.
Other states will certainly be watching if not impacted as a result of this movement in California. Employers who have employees in California will need to reevaluate their pay practices in an effort to uncover any gender pay inequality and to ensure they are complying with this new California law. But those employers you don't have employees in California, the impact of the legislation may still have a trickle-down effect as more and more employees become aware of this issue and demand fair treatment under the existing laws.
Today, one third of American children – a total of 15 million – are being raised without a father. According to US Census Bureau, of the 12-million single-parent families in 2014 more than 80% we're headed by single mothers. This means that the gender pay gap will impact everyone and it's an issue we should all be concerned about.
