From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlo-thomas/equal-pay-for-women_b_2678611.html
Marlo Thomas
02/21/2013
Let’s play a little game.
Let’s say you’re a hard-working working woman. You’re trying to make ends meet and doing okay — the economy is tough, but you’re tougher.
Still, it’s a struggle. Suddenly, someone walks up to you and hands you a $10,000 check. You’re thrilled, of course, and immediately begin thinking about what you’ll do with the new-found dough. Maybe you’ll put it right into the bank to save for the kids’ college tuition. Maybe you’ll go shopping for a car, so you can get back and forth to work easier. Or maybe you’ll just say, “What the hell,” and finally plan that well-earned family vacation.
Whatever your decision, this money was an unexpected windfall — and one that you technically didn’t earn, right?
Well, the truth is, if you’re a working woman in America today, you actually did earn that money. It’s just that no one ever gave it to you.
According to the National Women’s Law Center, the majority of America’s full-time working women are still being paid 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes — a paltry 18-cent increase over what women were making in 1970, when I first joined the fight for equal pay. This disparity, says the Law Center, translates into $10,622 less per median-income woman every year.
There’s that check for ten grand that you never got.
Almost two years ago, I posted a blog that underscored our failure to make headway in this forty-year fight. I noted that not only is pay disparity dispiriting at the bottom of the ladder (where hourly-waged men made 40 or 80 cents an hour more than women), but downright outrageous up the corporate ladder, where the gap between women and men executives is $150,000 a year. That should shake all of us up.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlo-thomas/equal-pay-for-women_b_2678611.html
