Today is Equal Pay Day. April 8th marks the day each year – 98 days in – that women catch up to what their male counterparts earned the year before. On average, women in the US earn 77 cents for each dollar earned by a man. Women of color earn less, on average – 65 cents for African American women, 54 cents for Latinas. The gender wage gap has not budged in a decade. When the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was signed into law by President Kennedy – 50+ years ago! – women earned, on average, 59 cents to the dollar. Obviously the pace of change has been glacial.

Women earn less than men even when their educational achievement is equal. In 2008, female college graduates with bachelor’s degrees who were working full time one year after graduation were paid 82% of what their male cohort earned. The wage gap persists by every measure, across occupations and pay levels.

Studies show that men and women are less likely to hire women who ask for pay raises and to consider them difficult. Because women are the primary breadwinners in more than 41 percent of households with children and co-breadwinners in an additional 23 percent of homes, sexist stereotypes and entrenched discriminatory practice is hurting families, not just women.

A lifetime of financial inequity keeps women and their families constantly on the brink of poverty. The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back From the Brink describes the cycle. A glimmer of hope for women in Pennsylvania is the introduction of Pay Equity bills in the state House (HB 1890) and Senate (SB 1212) that would close gaps in existing laws and end pay secrecy – a first step towards women finding out what they should be earning, and something President Obama is poised to do for federal contractors. At the national level, the US Senate is once again considering the Paycheck Fairness bill. Urge your Senator to end the economic injustice against women!