Why Equal Pay Should Matter to Government at Every Level

According to laws already on the books both in New York State and the United States, Equal Pay Day for ALL Women should be December 31. But it's not. The average woman must work far into the next year to earn what the average man earned the previous year. 

Every class and race of American woman suffers from the pay gap. And in fact, every group actually lost financial ground between 2018 and 2019. And for women of color, the pay gap is crushingly wide. It takes Latina women a full 20 months to catch up. The Latina woman’s pay gap is 53 cents to the average white man’s salary dollar.

The gender pay gap not only hurts women and their families, but it also hurts the communities they support. That means local businesses are hurt through lost sales, as are local schools and governments that depend upon sales tax and property tax dollars to fund the programs and the infrastructure those communities need to exist.

Collectively, women in New York State lose $17 billion dollars a year due to the pay gap. Those lost wages would close a lot of budget gaps at every level of government and make a real difference to women and their families and the communities they live in. The gender wage pay is an important reason why 26.8% of New York State women live in poverty.

For example, in St. Lawrence County, 35% of children live in single parent households. The majority of these household are headed by women, who are already struggling to make ends meet because of under-employment, low-wage jobs, lack of affordable childcare, the gender wage gap and other barriers to economic success which are far beyond their individual control.

In rural communities, 76% of adults report that good jobs are scarce in their area. While, urban areas experienced a net gain of 3.6 million jobs from 2007 to 2015, rural areas lost 400,000 jobs during that time. Many rural areas continue to struggle to recover from the Great Recession.

Women make up two-thirds of the low-wage workforce, making them especially likely to face the unstable work schedules – there is no non-traditional hours professional child care available in most rural areas. In addition to the challenge of low-wage work, women are disproportionately likely to be caregivers. Women are nearly 1.4 times more likely than men to provide unpaid care and help to people who live outside of their home.

When you factor in that woman are more likely to face workplace discrimination than men, women face a triple whammy: the lack of good, living wage jobs, the gender pay gap, and being trapped in jobs that put them at risk. Nearly 36% of women who filed sexual harassment charges from 2012 to 2016 claimed that they faced retaliation as a result, such as their employers forcing them out of their jobs or reducing their hours.

Rural places already face additional barriers to work. The lack of access to broadband slows the growth of rural economies, hampering total employment growth and the opening of new businesses. Plus, rural economies have less industrial diversity than urban areas. The loss of a central employer leads to tremendous job loss. We’ve certainly seen that here in St. Lawrence County.

In the North Country, the wage gap is 78.5% for women’s median salary as compared to a man’s. That translates to a wage gap of more than $9,800 per year. The numbers speak for themselves when it comes to the economic impact for families and households.

Even though the Paycheck Fairness Act just passed the House of Representatives, there is little hope that it will pass in the Republican-led Senate or be supported by the Trump Administration.

Yet is it government at every level that stands to gain the most from real and enforceable pay equity laws and practices. The boost to the economy by putting fair and equal pay in the hands of every American family would be enormous. It would mean $17 billion additional dollars here in New York State alone.

Equal Pay would take a lot of the social safety net burden off local counties as well. New York is just one of 5 states that require Medicaid money to be disbursed up front by the county, which must then wait for reimbursement.

When politicians tell you the nation can’t afford equal pay, they are only listening to the people who have bought their time and attention.