NCPE logo
 
 
Home button
  
About NCPE button
 
Pay Equity Info button
 
Equal Pay Day button
 
What You Can Do button
 
Join button
 
 
© National Committee
on Pay Equity
 
 
   
Next Equal Pay Day: Tuesday, April 20, 2010
About Equal Pay Day
 
 

Ledbetter Bill Becomes Law

On January 29, 2009 President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, making it the first legislation of his administration. The Act reverses the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in 2007 (Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.) and restores the ability of victims of wage discrimination to hold their employers accountable for injustice and challenge the practice in court. Lilly Ledbetter was with the President when he signed the bill.  VIEW VIDEO from the signing

The Senate passed the bill January 22 by a vote of 61 to 36: VOTE TALLY
The House passed the bill January 27 by a vote of 250 to 177: VOTE TALLY

Urge your senators to support the Paycheck Fairness Act:

The House passed the Paycheck Fairness Act to strengthen enforcement of the Equal Pay Act on January 9, 2009. Please urge your senators to support S.182. The Paycheck Fairness Act would ensure effective remedies for wage discrimination and make it easier to sue on behalf of groups of women.

Read NCPE's Feb. 23, 2009 letter to senators urging quick action on the Paycheck Fairness Act (S.182). 

Join the Fair Pay Campaign to support pay equity legislation:

The Fair Pay Campaign is led by the American Association of University Women, the Feminist Majority Foundation, Legal Momentum, the National Organization for Women, the National Partnership for Women and Families, and the National Women's Law Center, with 250 other local, state, and national groups -- including NCPE -- joining them.

 

Michele Leber, NCPE chair, debates USA Today about the wage gap:

Old attitudes die hard: Discrimination prevents women from getting salaries they deserve

...written in response to USA Today's opinion piece Why women earn less: Career choices, business ventures are bigger factors than gender bias

Photos from the 2008 Equal Pay Day press conference on Capitol Hill

Census statistics released on Women's Equality Day--August 26, 2008--show that the gap between men's and women's earnings changed by less than one percent from 2006 to 2007, narrowing only slightly from 76.9 to 77.8 percent. Based on the median earnings of full-time, year-round workers, women's earnings were $35,102, and men's earnings were $45,113. Median earnings for women of color are generally even lower, and all showed percentage drops in the last year. In 2007, the earnings for African American women were $31,009, 68.7 percent of men's earnings, a drop of more than 3 percent; Asian American women's earnings were $40,374, 89.5 percent of men's earnings, a drop of 3.5 percent; and Latinas earnings were $26,612, 59 percent of men's, a drop of .6 percent. NCPE's The Wage Gap Over Time table shows how little the wage gap has changed in the last seven years.

WORK$MART: Pay Negotiation for Women,
a two-part webinar by Evelyn Murphy of The WAGE Project presented by the National Women's Law Center. Download the presentations and recordings:

WORK$MART: Pay Negotiation for Women (Part 1) was held on Oct. 1, 2008:
Download the presentation as a PDF     Watch a replay of the webinar

WORK$MART: Pay Negotiation for Women (Part 2) was held on Oct. 8, 2008:
Download the presentation as a PDF    Watch a replay of the webinar

WAGE: Women Are Getting Even
WAGE Clubs:
Nationwide grassroots movement to close the wage gap

On Equal Pay Day, April 25, 2006 NCPE -- in collaboration with Business and Professional Women/USA (BPW/USA); the WAGE Project, a new grassroots organization dedicated to closing the wage gap, and other leading national organizations -- announced at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC a new nationwide grassroots movement designed to close the wage gap once and for all.

Through this movement, WAGE Clubs are forming throughout the country to mobilize groups of women to talk about the wage gap and to obtain the tools, support and momentum they need to get even at work.

The wage gap costs the average American full-time woman worker between $700,000 and $2 million over the course of her lifetime, according to economist Evelyn Murphy, president of the WAGE Project.

Speakers at the press conference, who discussed the current status of federal equal pay legislation and the need for multiple approaches to this long-standing problem, included members of Congress: Senator Tom Harkin, Representative Rosa DeLauro, and Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton; Michele Leber, Chair, NCPE; Roslyn Ridgeway, President, BPW/USA; Evelyn Murphy, and Annie Houle, Founder, The Maine WAGE Project.

The Department of Labor has abolished its Equal Pay Matters Initiative, removed all information about narrowing the wage gap from its Web site, refused to use available tools to identify violations of equal pay laws, and adopted regulations that deprive millions of women of the right to overtime pay. The Department seeks to abolish the Equal Opportunity Survey required of federal contractors.
If we didn't have a wage gap, we wouldn't need this coupon!
NCPE's COUPON was featured in Jan-Feb 2005 Making Bread Magazine ("Female Finance" column on pages 20-23)!
Updated June 3, 2009                                        website by Swerdloff Digital Design