Equal Pay Day!

This is a topic that I can say I am VERY familiar with. My sophomore year of college, in 2005, I was told I had to write a paper on a policy and follow up on the transformation of it over the years. The typical feminist that I am, I decided to write my paper on the Equal Pay Act of 1963. This paper the next year would transform and expand to turn into my Research Methods paper on Discrimination Against Women in the Workforce, which proved to be a much harder paper to write due to a limited number of resources. The following year I followed up on previous papers with my thesis, which was on Discrimination Against Mothers in the Workforce. My thesis was not only the most challenging paper of the three because it had to be about 25 pages long, but mostly because of the lack of resources and published material on this topic.

When I told a relative that my thesis was on this topic, my relative responded with, "It must be a hard paper to write. Discrimination in the workforce doesn't really exist anymore. Women are equals and discrimination is illegal. That's the reason you can't find literature on it. It's not as prevelant as you thought."

I would love to say that he is correct, but I just can't. Discrimination does exist in many forms, the one that I'm most familiar with due to my research being that of equal pay. When I wrote my first paper in 2005, I recall noting that in 2004, women were paid nearly 77 cents to the dollar that every man makes. (http://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html) As of this year, it is now a whopping 78 cents. Some improvement is always great, but I would also like to point out 2 things. 1)The wage gap has only closed 49 cents since 1963 and 2)It could always go back down again next year. Change is change, however it does not define permanence.

At this rate, the wage gap has closed less than 1 cent a year. This gap shows us that discrimination is living and well. The lack of literature on this topic and the assumption by others that women are considered to be complete equals because "discrimination is illegal" tell me that we still have a lot of work to do before a significant change can take place. The battle is not over. I can only hope that the initiative Obama has already taken and the initiatives that will take place in the next 4 years, along with the work of other men and women who care about this issue, can help us get closer to bridging this gap before another 46 years pass.

~Mea