Economic equity news is a weekly round-up of articles by Donna Seymour of AAUW-NYS that features our core values of poverty solutions, opportunity and access, workplace fairness, healthy lives, equal pay and representation at all tables. Sign up for our mailing list to receive this directly to your inbox.
- Legislators organize blitz of equal-pay legislation in nearly half the states via The Washington Post
“We decided that because legislators have been asking for it, let’s try to make a coordinated effort around this to try to nationalize the issue,” said Nick Rathod, director of the State Innovation Exchange, a three-year-old network of progressive state legislators. But that doesn’t mean it’s a slam dunk. The biggest challenge, lawmakers say, is getting their colleagues to agree that the gender pay gap is still a problem, more than 50 years after Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which banned discrimination on the basis of sex. Despite that and many similar state laws, women often aren’t even aware they’re being paid less than men for similar work, much less willing to go through the hassle of a lawsuit— as many people realized when the Sony e-mail hack revealed that actress Jennifer Lawrence was paid much less than her male co-stars.
“I won’t let anyone take advantage of me. But today they have more tools and they can research these companies and these jobs, and find the companies that will treat them fairly and equitably. “My goal is to educate young women and men. They understand it too, because the men together has strengthened this drive so much. Most families today have two people working, and the men talk about their mothers or their daughters who are working. They understand it. It seems so simple to me, because in the communities where people are paid better they will turn around and put more money in the economy.”
- Department of Labor Proposes New Rule to Fight Pay Discrimination via The New York Times
As the White House celebrated the seventh anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, President Obama directed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to collect summary pay data by gender, race, and ethnicity each year. This proposed rule would apply to businesses with 100 or more employees. Once implemented, this data collection would cover over 63 million employees, providing critical insights into the gender and racial pay gap and better insight into discriminatory pay practices across industries and occupations. This step expands on and replaces an earlier AAUW-supported plan proposed by DOL to collect similar information from federal contractors. The new proposed rule is more efficient, dramatically less costly for businesses, and utilizes existing mechanisms to collect and report the data.
- Obama targets gender pay gap with plan to collect companies’ salary data via The Washington Post
President Obama proposed a new rule Friday that would require every large company in America to report employees’ pay based on race and gender, an effort to reduce longstanding pay inequities for women and minorities. The new policy, already drawing criticism from some business leaders, would order companies with at least 100 employees to add salary numbers on a form they already annually submit that reports employees’ sex, age and job groups. The new pay information would alert the EEOC to companies with significant wage disparities, which could result in lawsuits.
- Joe Biden joins Cuomo to push for paid family leave via Times Union
Speaking at times in starkly personal terms, Gov. Andrew Cuomo joined Vice President Joe Biden on Friday to headline a rally pushing the governor’s plan for a Paid Family Leave law that would provide New Yorkers with 12 weeks to care for loved ones, from newborns to aged parents.
Women in the Army and Air Force will soon be getting twice as much paid maternity leave, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Thursday. “This puts the DOD in the top tier of institutions nationwide,” he said of the new policy that gives women in all branches of the military 12 weeks for paid maternity leave.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced the first-ever High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment to provide thought leadership and mobilize concrete actions aimed at closing economic gender gaps that persist around the world.
Donna Seymour, who hails from the (far upstate) North Country of NYS, has spent 40 plus years advocating for children, women and family issues, equity, sustainability, and social justice issues. Currently serving as the Public Policy VP for AAUW-NYS (the American Association University Women), she is also a member the League of Women Voters, the Equal Pay Coalition, PTA, NOW, and Planned Parenthood, just to name a few.