DeLauro Calls for an End to the Need for Equal Pay DayDeLauro Calls for an End to the Need for Equal Pay Day

Among the many great benefits of the commonsense health reform package we passed last month is a guarantee that finally in America being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition. By bringing an end to discriminatory policies like gender rating and insurance coverage for maternity, preventive, and wellness care, our legislation puts women's health on an equal footing at long last.

It is time now to do the same for women's earnings. I cannot think of a better way to follow our historic success on health care last month than finally signing the Paycheck Fairness Act into law. In America today, women now make up half of the work force. 2/3 of women are either the sole breadwinner or co-breadwinner in their family. Women are also more likely than men to graduate from college. They run more than 10 million businesses with combined annual sales of $1.1 trillion, and are responsible for making 80% of the consumer buying decisions.

And yet, right now in the 21st century women make only 78 cents on the dollar as compared to men. Women of color are even worse off. African American women make 68 cents on the dollar compared to the highest earners, while Hispanic women make only 57 cents. Unmarried women, those who are single, widowed, divorced, or separated, have an average annual household salary that is almost $12,000 lower than unmarried men. And they make a paltry 56 cents on the dollar when compared to married men.

Over a lifetime, these disparities take a huge toll on women. According to the national committee for pay equity, women are losing out on between $400,000 and $2 million on average over the course of a lifetime. As a result, 70% of seniors living in poverty are women. And this pay disparity is particularly galling when you consider the current crisis in our labor market. It is true that more men have lost jobs than women in the recent recession, mainly because of the industries affected. But that only means that more and more women are forced to take on the full burden of keeping their families afloat, making the problem about smaller paychecks even more acute.

The recession aside, this is not a new problem. In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower told the Congress, that, and I quote, "Legislation to apply the principle of equal pay for equal work without discrimination because of sex is a matter of simple justice." Seven years later under President Kennedy, the Congress passed the Equal Pay Act to end the "serious and endemic problem of unequal wages." And 47 years later, we all know that the act is not working as intended in its current form.

That is why we mark today, Pay Equity Day, the day that a woman's 2009 earnings catches up with what men made last year. This is an occasion quite frankly I wish we no longer had to commemorate. The good news is that conditions are finally ripe to achieve real pay equity in America. We in the House of Representatives have now passed the paycheck fairness bill twice, legislation that will give real teeth to the Equal Pay act at last. Simply said, men and women in the same job should get the same amount of wages.

You would think that that is a no-brainer, but the fact of the matter is whether you are a waitress, bus driver, engineer, university professor, news anchor, women are being paid less for the same job as their male counterparts. Those of us who serve in the House of Representatives, men and women, different parts of the country, different education, different skills, we all get paid the same amount of money. That is not true for most women in this nation. Now, we have passed it in the House and we wait only for the United States Senate to act.

So we are on the cusp of achieving real economic security for American women. I urge my colleagues to impress upon the Senate the necessity of this legislation. We have a moral obligation to face this continuing pay inequity head-on. It's time to get it done. Our passage of health reform last month has shown that the American government can still accomplish great things, that we can still make this country a fairer, a more compassionate, and more humane place for people to live.

Let's finally ensure America's women, now half of this nation's workforce, are treated as fairly and as equitably as the other half. Let's give real teeth to the Equal Pay Act at last and make sure that women are respected and valued for the job that they do and paid the same amount of money in the same job that any man may have. What we need to do is to make one of this one of the last Equal Pay Days in our history.