Eradicating Wealth Inequality Includes Achieving Equal Pay: Sources

The sources for the Winter 2019 policy brief are as follows:

  1. Congress should pass the Paycheck Fairness Act to update and strengthen the EPA and provide robust protection against sex-based pay discrimination in the workplace.
  2. …and families rely on women’s earnings.
  3. The gender wage gap varies by race and is larger for most groups of women of color…
  4. Gender wage gaps persist in all 50 states and in nearly every occupation.
  5. Significant wage gaps also exist for mothers compared to fathers, LGBTQ women compared with men, and women with disabilities compared to men with disabilities.
  6. But studies show that at the very beginning of a woman’s career, just one year after college graduation…
  7. 38% of the wage gap remains unexplained.
  8. . A recent experiment revealed, for example, that when presented with identical resumes…
  9. The Paycheck Fairness Act (“PFA”) would update and strengthen the EPA and is a critical measure to address pay discrimination.
  10. In fact, 61% of private sector employees report…
  11. When an employer relies on an applicant’s previous salary to set pay, women and people of color can carry pay discrimination and lower wages with them from job to job.
  12. …a Black woman stands to lose an astounding $946,120 over the course of a 40-year career.
  13. Recent data show that single Black women have a median wealth…
  14. A recent study found that if women received the same compensation as their male counterparts…
  15. Moreover, nearly 60% of women would earn more
  16. In 2015, 42% of mothers were the sole or primary breadwinners…
  17. …another 22.4% were co-breadwinners…
  18. Yet in 2016, more than half of all poor children
  19. …and female-headed households with children were much more likely to be poor
  20. …poverty would fall from 5.6 million to 3.1 million.
  21. Not surprisingly, recent public opinion data show that 79% of women and 70% of men…
  22. …legislation in over two-thirds of the states
  23. some even go further in enacting protections, such as requiring employers to provide salary ranges to job applicants…
  24. …women often ask for less when they negotiate than men
  25. mothers experience a particularly large wage gap.
  26. pregnant workers with a medical need have reasonable accommodations
  27. adopting nationwide paid family and medical leave and paid sick leave; providing access to affordable, high quality childcare; and ensuring fair work scheduling practices—all of which help ensure that parenthood doesn’t push women out of work or into lower paying jobs.
  28. women’s overrepresentation in low-wage and tipped jobs
  29. raising the minimum wage and doing away with the unfair and unjust two-tiered minimum wage system for tipped workers will help to close the gap.