Equal Pay Day!
The Works Bakery in Portsmouth, Keene, Concord, and Durham, New Hampshire will charge women customers only 79 % of their bill on Tuesday, April 12 as part of the Stand With Women Campaign put on by New Hampshire Alliance and the Granite State Progress Education Fund. The campaign is highlighting the wage gap that finds women earning just 79 cents to a man’s dollar.
As reported by seacoastonline.com :
Zandra Rick-Hawkins, executive director of Granite State Progress, said the event will take place all day and the discount will be given to women without them having to ask for it. The event coincides with Equal Pay Day, a day that recognizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. Rick-Hawkins said the pay gap reflects the several discriminatory barriers to equal pay, including lower pay for women in the same job, the segregation of women into lower-paying jobs and exclusion of women from higher-paying, nontraditional jobs, and bias against women with care-giving responsibilities.
However, the 79 cents only reflects the pay gap between men and women: black female full-time workers make 60 cents to a white male worker's dollar, and Latino and Hispanic women make 55 cents to a white man's dollar, according to Rick-Hawkins. According to her, the wage gap means white women stand to lose $430,480 over the course of a 40-year career. For Latinas, the career losses mount to $1,007,080, and for African-American women the losses are $877,480.
"The pay gap demonstrates just how strongly these many factors impact the economic security of women workers," Rick-Hawkins said. "If we don’t act to close the wage gap, a woman just starting out today stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of her career, undercutting her ability to provide for herself and her family, as well as her retirement security."
This is great idea to bring attention to the need for fairness in the workplace. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act wasn’t just about women, as many think. The law applies to all claims of pay discrimination—whether they are based on sex, race, color, religion, national origin, age or disability.
Have a Happy Equal Pay Day!
For more info visit Equal Pay Day 2016 here — and wear red tomorrow!