Wearing Wage Equality before Labor Day

Something we have known for a long time is that women in the workplace make less than men. I remember growing up in a small town and knowing about a particular grocery store which paid the men more than the women who worked their for the exact same job.

Despite the Equal Pay Gap law amended in 1963, which mandates that men and women in the same work place be given equal pay for equal work, women are still making approximately 77 cents on one dollar of when men make for the exact same job.

This is still an issue after President Obama signed an Executive Order to prevent workplace discrimination in April, 2014. The Executive Order – Non-Retaliation for Disclosure of Compensation Information – recognizes that when employees are prohibited from inquiring about, disclosing, or discussing their compensation with fellow workers, compensation discrimination is much more difficult to discover and remediate, and more likely to persist. The Order makes it mandatory for federal contractors to turn in data on employee compensation based on age and sex. This is one of many objectives put into place since 2010 under the Obama Administration.

When did the world start talking about it? When Patricia Arquette gracefully put on her cheaters during her Oscars acceptance speech, on February 22, and made it sexy to care. I’m not saying sexy in a feminine sense. I mean it in an appealing way. That evening, I, along with many other women of the workforce, were working blindly through the calendar year accepting the fact that we weren’t making as much as our male colleagues. It wasn’t that I didn’t know that this is an issue, it was that I didn’t know it was okay to “make a stink” about it. You see, I have no idea what my colleagues make. To many americans, it’s simply “uncouth” to know such things about the people you spend 2/3rd of your waking hours with. But let’s be honest with ourselves, until women start making themselves uncomfortable and asking for the facts, the issue will never be resolved.