When President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, the country was watching Lassie on television, listening to The Beatles on vinyl and paying 22 cents for a loaf of bread – a great deal has happened since the law was signed in 1963. Women now graduate from college as often as men, work in many fields previously closed to them and occupy leadership positions across the nation’s workforce. But even with those accomplishments, we have not come far enough. More needs to be done to ensure that our policies address persistent discriminatory employment practices, including unequal pay, so that college graduates entering today’s workforce have the pay they deserve.
April 12 marks Equal Pay Day and, unfortunately, pay equity is still an aspiration – not a reality. In 1963, women earned 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man. While that’s no longer the case, on average, women still make only about 77 cents for every dollar that men earn and are more likely than men to live in poverty. Even adjusting for variables like education level and time in the workforce, there remains a persistent wage gap between women and men, resulting in innumerable missed opportunities over the course of a woman’s lifetime.
Fonte: White House