Today is Equal Pay Day.
This day signifies the fact that it takes women almost 16 months to earn what men earn in 12. Women still only earn about 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, and the wage gap worsens for women of color.
In fact, the wage gap has remained at basically the same level for the past 20 years. A large part of the reason for this is that women tend to work in lower paying jobs than men and in lower paying industries.
Every day at The Women’s Foundation, we are fighting these systemic reasons for the differences in men’s and women’s earnings. Here are just a few examples:
- We support programs that allow women to move Into higher paying jobs. Through Stepping Stones, we support job-training programs that prepare women to get jobs with salaries that are high enough to support a family. These are often jobs that have traditionally been held by men. For example, Washington Area Women in the Trades provides non-traditional employment training for homeless and low-income women. They estimate that in five years, more than 3,000 women will be provided assistance and more than 400 graduates will be prepared for high-skill/ high-wage jobs in our community.
- We support programs that ensure that women-dominated fields have better salaries and benefits. Historically, jobs that have been traditionally held by women (like teachers and nurses) have earned lower salaries than jobs held by men. Our Grantee Partners, like CASA of Maryland, work to fight this historical bias and to ensure that jobs that are held primarily by women earn better salaries. For example, CASA of Maryland has a program to get better wages for domestic workers and to make sure that they get employment benefits as well.
- We support efforts that make sure that minimum-wage earners (who are disproportionately women) have a living wage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women are the majority of minimum wage earners. DC Employment Justice Center, a Grantee Partner, was a core member of the D.C. Living Wage Coalition that successfully advocated for legislation that provided a living wage of $11.75 for workers employed by companies with contracts with the D.C. government. It is estimated that this change will collectively increase women’s wages in the Washington metropolitan area by $7.5 million.
When you support The Women’s Foundation – by volunteering with us, by making a donation, by being a part of our community – you are supporting our efforts to increase women’s salaries and to take down the barriers that keep women from earning as much as their male colleagues.
Joining us in our efforts is a pretty terrific way to honor Equal Pay Day.
