Equal Pay Day

Today is Equal Pay Day -- because (in case you missed Amy Joyce's Life at Work column on Sunday) today marks how far into 2006 (115 days) the average full-time working woman must go to earn as much as a man earned during 2005.

And don't go thinking the working woman numbers are pulled down by lesser educations or inadequate experience or because women chose to take time off to give birth or raise children. These numbers measure salaries of women who work full-time and haven't been out of work for any type of pregnancy, maternity or disability leave within the past 12 months. These women are paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by comparable male employees. Women who work part-time or have taken maternity leave earn even less! And women's earnings have been stuck at this level for most of the past decade.

Here's more: A Cornell University study released in August showed bias increases the more children a woman has. The more kids, the less potential employers are willing to pay her. The opposite is true for men: the more children, the more employers want to pay him.

Facts like these naturally infuriate me. They make me look around and say:

Okay, a man in the office next to me, perhaps not even doing as good a job as I am, gets paid more, just for having facial hair. And there's me, daily facing the teeth-grinding stress of trying to be a good mom and a good employee. Despite the jokes from men at my office about maternity leave being a "nice vacation." Despite a female colleague without kids who calls me at 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. regularly, as if trying to make work interfere at the precise moments my kids need me most. Despite the school personnel who always call me first and my husband never when there's any type of problem with our kids during the day. Despite men so clueless that they raise an eyebrow when told I write about working and stay-at-home moms: "You could write a whole book about that?"

I think women should get paid MORE than men. And moms should get paid MORE than people without children, or at least get some juicy tax break, simply because it is so damn hard pulling it all off, day after day, feeling like you've worked a whole eight or 10 hours by the time you get to the office at 9 a.m. And don't think I'm leaving stay-at-home moms out of the equation -- they need a tax break, and child-care access, and financial protection in case of divorce, and plain old RESPECT. Sometimes a mom needs to put her children first -- for an hour, for a day, for a decade. We are worth MORE to society, not less, because of all we do.

The most demoralizing, frustrating fact is that it's so hard to bring about greater equality at work and in government on a mom-by-mom basis. Especially when many of our most high-powered, best-educated moms lose clout when they stay home with kids (There's nothing wrong with staying home to care for kids -- what's wrong is that women who stay at home often lose power to bring about change. And the women still at work suffer from the diminished number of moms at high levels). But employers -- together with the male and female employees -- can bring about change that makes the workplace more employee-friendly. Equal pay for equal work, flexibility except when it's truly impossible, support for the lives employees lead outside of work. It's not just moms and kids who will benefit -- although more equitable treatment of moms and kids should be enough, in itself, to motivate companies to change. Everyone benefits from fair treatment. And everyone loses when inequality like 77 cents to the dollar persists.

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  April 25, 2006; 6:00 AM ET  | Category:  Research
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