Women’s Equality and the Wage Gap in 2020
As I was driving home on Friday, I got a notification on my phone. When I’m driving, I don’t typically look at notifications. But this time I did. It was one of the saddest things I heard for a while. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just passed away. I have always been a deep admirer of her work and what she has done for women’s equality. I had to take a break and park the car for a second to try to understand the news better. And yes, she is gone.
She’s the one who was discriminated based on being a woman and being a mother when she graduated from law school in 1959. She then used those experiences as a passion for creating a movement – equality for women. She continued to work hard to educate ordinary people and pushed to change the laws for 27 years. She contended in front of the supreme court multiple times, defending equality. Now she’s gone at the age of 87. The supreme court is becoming more conservative and dominated by men deciding the roles of women in society.
Today, we (women) still don’t have the fundamental equality under the law. Women make 72% of men’s pay, and Black women make 62%[1]. Equal pay should be an absolute law and not have any exemptions.
Let’s look at a Black female making $30,000 a year in California. After about $5,000 in taxes, she ends up with $25,000 a year. This is only $480 per week. If there were no discriminations, her $30,000 a year would have been $48,000 because she’s getting 62% of the pay men make. At the $48,000 a year, the taxes would be $6,400, she would take home $866 per week. This is a $386 per week difference. This weekly difference could have been more money to spend on childcare, college education, health insurance/health care, food, paying student loan debt, and a little more for a better place to live. When we hear discrimination in the news or when we hear discrimination in the workplace or with friends and families, they seem to be just words. But $386 /week is not a word. This is money in the pocket to have the opportunity to live a little better.
But that’s not all; we actually have a bigger problem. Girls in high school and colleges are not encouraged to pursue STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) programs. As a result, they study English, history, and other majors that would only lead to lower-paying jobs in the market. Like our beloved teachers. Even as their passions guide their careers, the men take up the spaces in fields that pay higher wages.
There is only one way to fix the pay gap. We must make it a law and then enforce it. If we don’t make it illegal – some will continue to follow the current practice. If there are no consequences for discrimination, then nothing will change. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 banned employers from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Yet, there are conditions set in place when unequal pay is permitted to leave dark grey lines where unequal pay is allowed, leaving room for continuous discrimination[2]. We need to enforce it and have meaningful penalties when someone breaks the law.
Conclusion
Justice Ginsburg has passed, but she left us with the experience that you can be discriminated against as a woman and a mother, and still end up sitting on the supreme court of the United States. We’re no longer in the 1950s and 1960s anymore; we’re in the 21st century. Our sons and daughters 20 years from now will judge us on whether we could solve these two massive issues to females, (1) Equal pay and (2) Equal access to education for STEM and other higher-paying jobs. Only in the last 100 years have women been given some status. The movement started with voting and continued to push equality into the board rooms of large companies. Yes, we have made progress, but is it enough and where do we grow from here? I’m optimistic because I know there are thousands of young women out there who will be the next Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
B Strong,
Aysha
[1] https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap
[2] “The law also includes guidelines for when unequal pay is permitted, specifically on the basis of merit, seniority, workers’ quality or quantity of production and other factors not determined by gender.”