COLUMBUS – April 12 is Equal Pay Day, symbolizing how far into 2016 women have to work to catch up to the wages men earned in 2015, according to a report from the National Women’s Law Center.
Despite over five decades of federal law prohibiting gender-based wage discrimination, the report says women in the U.S. earn about 79 cents for every dollar men are paid.
Beth Morrow Lonn with the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio says the gap is larger for women of color and gets wider among more educated workers.
“We have found that as a woman and a man have increased educational levels the gap actually gets wider so that a woman with a graduate level degree is actually making 67 cents on the dollar,” she said.
The report says a woman in Ohio loses about $423,000 over her lifetime due to inequities in pay.
Equal Pay Day is an annual opportunity for Democrats to lambast Republicans for inaction on the issue. Democrats support legislation requiring employers to show pay disparity is not based on gender, among other steps.
But Republicans who control the House and Senate have announced no plans to act, even though a few GOP lawmakers are pushing bills of their own.
Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman is supporting the Gender Advancement in Pay — GAP — Act, sponsored by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), which Portman says would make clear that employers must pay men and women equal wages for equal work, without reducing the opportunity for employers to reward merit. He also has spoken in support of Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer’s Workplace Advancement Act, which requires employers to notify workers about their rights to equal pay, prevents retaliation against employees and enhances opportunities for women in industries in which they are traditionally underrepresented, such as manufacturing, energy, and transportation.