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Title: EQUAL PAY NOT FOR WOMEN [Corre
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Blog Entry: Almost four months. That's how much extra women need to work per year just to earn what men made last year. Russia Equal Pay Day this year falls on April 20. It's a symbolic date: the National Committee on Pay Equity picks a Tuesday in April each year to remind the U.S. workforce just how big the wage gap remains. Mathematically, according to Michele Leber, chair of the National Committee on Pay Equity, the precise date this year falls on April 19. That means a woman would have had to work all of 2009, plus up until today, to receive the same pay a man got for just working last year. As the Women's Center of Jacksonville, Mayor's Commission on the Status of Women and national women's groups and justice organizations mark Equal Pay Day, the pay chasm remains wide. Nationally, women make 77 cents to every dollar that men make, according to 2008 U.S Census data. In Florida, women are paid about 80 cents for every dollar men make, according to calculations made in 2008 by the National Women's Law Center, using U.S. Census data. Despite the inequity, there may actually be something to cheer about this year. The Paycheck Fairness Act (HR 12 and S 182) passed the U.S. House and is still waiting to be read in the Senate. If signed into law, it would close loopholes that the Equal Pay Act doesn't cover, such as wage secrecy and employer retaliation. Yet significant gains in the wage gap haven't been made in recent years: Since 2001, the percentage has fluctuated by only two cents, according to the National Committee on Pay Equity. "It affects [women's] Social Security benefits, pension and [their] entire retirement, and some of the poorest of our population are women who go into retirement alone," said Debra Phillians, community education director at the Women's Center of Jacksonville. handbags-o So why, more than four decades after the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963 - when women made just 59 cents for every dollar men made - are women still being paid so much less than men? And why is the wage gap closing so slowly? "Women are being unfairly overlooked and underpaid, and the reality remains that there is discrimination against women in the workplace partly because we do bear children and end up staying home with them more often than men do, so from an employer's perspective women aren't valued as much as male workers," said Arcelia Hurtado, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates. Pay inequity between the sexes is caused primarily by the structure of the labor force, in which many employers expect their employees to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, she said. Now that many households rely on a woman's paycheck, she said, this structure is no longer realistic and puts a burden on women. "It's going to take a cultural change where being at work 24 hours a day seven days a week is not the norm," Hurtado said. "But it's structured that way, where men should be available all the time to their employer and that women will take care of the home and kids and everything else, but that isn't the reality anymore. I think that employers' attitudes have to catch up to reality and not what it was in the 1950s." Experts agree that several reasons are contributing to the U.S. pay disparity between sexes, and they involve responsibility from each party: employers, women and courts. Most agree that the Paycheck Fairness Act will help strengthen the Equal Pay Act in each area and help Other articles: http://www.clubbing-network.net/blog/view/id_232/title_bnp-member-pictured-with-neo-f/ http://www.wargods.tv/blog/view/id_845/title_quick-thinking-bobby-up-for-br/