Cyndi Lauper's 'Girls Just Want Equal Funds' Is the Feminist Anthem You Need
Yaaas! 💕💰
“I come home, in the morning light my mother says ‘why don’t you make the same as a guy.
Oh mama, dear, we’re not the fortunate ones, ’cause girls, they want equal funds.”
What gives? It’s called the “motherhood penalty,” and it’s a persistent problem for all women, not just mothers, working in America.
Mothers typically are paid only 73 cents for every dollar fathers are paid. Wait, it gets worse. After becoming fathers, men see a 6 percent *increase* in earnings — even after controlling for factors such as hours worked and marital status — while new mothers see a 4 percent *decrease* per child.
Sound fair? We didn’t think so.
At Work, Dads Get a Bonus, but Moms Get a Penalty. What Gives?
Sunday is Mother’s Day. But moms aren’t getting everything they deserve. Mothers typically are paid only 73 cents for every dollar fathers are paid.
Wait, it gets worse. After becoming fathers, men see a 6 percent *increase* in earnings — even after controlling for factors such as hours worked and marital status — while new mothers see a 4 percent *decrease* per child.
Sound fair? We didn’t think so.
What’s the Gender Pay Gap in Your State?
“Happy” Equal Pay Day! The gender pay gap exists in almost every congressional district. Find out how your state stacks up.
April 12 is Equal Pay Day.
Equal Pay Day marks the symbolic day when women’s pay finally “catches up” to men’s pay from the previous year.
You’ve probably heard that men are paid more than women are paid over their lifetimes. But what does that mean? Get the facts, and take action to close the gender pay gap. Every woman deserves equal pay!
Um, we wish. In the immortal words of Rihanna, #paymewhatyouoweme.
BREAKING: The gender pay gap has CLOSED! Oh wait…
We *wish* the pay gap were just a (bad) joke. Take action now.
This "Fair Pay" March Madness Bracket Is Absolutely Brilliant
Brilliant? We’ll take it! Here’s the only NCAA bracket you need.
Cheer for Equal Pay with Your NCAA Brackets
Nationally, women working full time in the United States typically are paid just 79 percent of what men are paid, a gap of 21 percent. With that in mind, we’ll be betting on the schools with the smallest gender pay gaps.
AAUW’s pay gap playoff brackets predict the victors of the women’s and men’s championships by calculating the gap between the mean earnings of female and male graduates 10 years after entry to college. The school whose graduates have a smaller gender pay gap advance to the next round.
How does your team fare in the fair-pay face-off? Take a look for yourself…
The Final Four in the women’s bracket is made up of two HBCUs — Alabama State and North Carolina A&T — as well as Albany and St. John’s, with the lowest earnings ratio of the four schools at 85 percent (Albany). Alabama State takes home the trophy with a 99 percent women’s earnings ratio compared to male graduates. The victory by the Lady Hornets reinforces AAUW’s findings of smaller pay gaps between women and men of color, since both race and gender clearly factor into the size of the pay gap.
Hampton University, one of the two historically black colleges in the men’s tournament, would be the champion based on it’s gender pay gap. Female graduates, on average, are paid 109 cents for every dollar male graduates are compensated. The Final Four would be made up of Florida Gulf Coast, Hampton, Temple and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Read more and see the full bracket.
Today is Asian American Women's Equal Pay Day. But We're Not Celebrating
It takes until March 15, 2016, for Asian American women to be paid as much as white men were paid in 2015 alone. Sound fair to you?
Chris Rock: If Jennifer Lawrence Were Black, 'She'd Really Have Something To Complain About'
Chris Rocks hits on an important fact: The gender pay gap affects all women, but it doesn’t affect all women equally.
Black women were paid 63 percent of what non-Hispanic white men were paid in 2014. That means it takes the typical black woman nearly seven extra months to be paid what the average white man took home back on December 31. That’s even worse than the national pay gap for women of all races, 79 percent, as reported by AAUW’s research.
Think about how that adds up in the course of a career, and we’re talking about losing a daunting chunk of change over a lifetime.
Humans Will Probably Walk on Mars Before Women Get Equal Pay
Here are just some of the things we might have before women achieve equal pay: flying cars, long walks on Mars, teleportation, hoverboards, household robots. Houston, we have a problem.
Based on two different projections — the pace of change since the 1960s and the pace of change in the past decade — women won’t see equal pay until 2059 or 2276, respectively. That’s because progress in closing the gender pay gap has stalled in recent years. The result? It could be more than 250 years, or nearly three generations, until women get fair pay.
There’s a problem when futuristic wish lists become more realistic than the prospect of equity. You can help close the pay gap by donating to AAUW this #GivingTuesday.
Altogether, the gender pay gap costs a typical woman at least $400,000 over the course of her career. That’s no small chunk of change. Because of the pay gap, women are more likely than men to live in poverty, struggle with the burden of student debt, and experience economic insecurity in retirement. The harm caused by pay inequity runs deep, especially given that women make up a record 40 percent of U.S. breadwinners.
According to AAUW’s latest research, women working full time, year round are paid only 79 cents for every dollar men are paid. The pay gap is even worse for mothers and women of color. African American women are typically paid just 63 percent of what white men are paid. Hispanic and Latina women face the largest gap, making 54 percent of white men’s earnings. For these women, it’s arguably more likely that their grandchildren will live with robots or walk on Mars than have fair pay.
For ourselves and our children, it’s time to pick up the pace in the fight for fair pay.
Founded in 1881, AAUW has been studying the gender pay gap since 1894, when we first analyzed the pay of college-educated women. Through the years, we’ve continued to conduct groundbreaking research on pay equity as well as advocate for policy and legislative action to close the pay gap. AAUW members were in the room when President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law in 1963. More recently, AAUW members worked tirelessly to help pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which was signed into law in 2009. It was a start, but the pay gap remains. And as trends show, it’s sticking around — that is, unless we act.
Equal pay shouldn’t be a dream for our great, great, great granddaughters. Agree? Lend a hand this #GivingTuesday!
Luckily, there are many things employers, individuals, and governments can do to help speed up the process, including supporting AAUW.When it comes to policy, we must continue to advocate for strong pay equity legislation, including the long-stalled Paycheck Fairness Act, as well as encourage employers to support flexible work schedules and conduct job audits to ensure fairness. AAUW also educates the public about the harm of the pay gap, and we hold national workshops to empower women to hone their salary negotiation skills. In September, we announced a collaboration with Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement to bring AAUW’s Work Smart salary negotiation workshop to half the working women in Bostonover the next five years. These efforts are critical elements as we work to close the gender pay gap.
It’s been an uphill battle, but progress has occurred. We’ve made strides since the 1930s, when the federal government actually required that its female workers be paid 25 percent less than male workers in the same jobs. Back then, American women likely felt that the prospect of receiving a paycheck equal to a man’s was the stuff of science fiction. But groups like AAUW have helped lead the charge in policy and cultural shifts. Today, we have the power to make fair pay a reality — if we all take action and chip in.
Buckle up those jet packs. Equal pay, here we come.
Our #TheReal10 campaign is calling out the gender pay gap. And the fact that it’s worse for women of color.
The U.S. Treasury has announced that the new $10 bill will have a woman on it. But there’s still a significant pay gap between men and women, and we want more than just symbolic change.