The Bottom Line
Fair and equitable compensation should be a top priority for companies if they want to reach their full business potential. Pay equity improves employee engagement, morale and performance; increases employee retention and reduces turnover; and attracts new talent – all so companies can remain competitive in a tight domestic labor market and an ever-expanding global market.
It’s never been more important for companies to conduct a pay equity analysis, then put a strategy in place that honestly confronts wage disparities and improves pay equity. This can be achieved through new job offers, merit pay increases, and promotions.
Despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – which require equal pay for equal work – the U.S. Census Bureau reports there was an 83.6 percent difference between the median weekly wages of women and the median weekly wages of men in 2023 ($1,005 to $1,202). However, it’s important we fully understand how these numbers are calculated because the method used cause them to be distorted.
The 83.6 percent pay difference is determined by dividing the average annual pay for women who work all year, full-time by the average annual pay of men who work all year, full-time. However, the Census Bureau considers working 35 or more hours a week to be “full time.”
The U.S. Department of Labor reports that among full-time workers, men were more likely than women to work more than 40 hours per week. The proportion of men (21 percent) who worked 41 or more hours per week in 2023 was almost double that of women (12 percent).
The number gets even more distorted by the fact that, in its calculations, the Census Bureau assumes that elementary and secondary teachers work 52 weeks a year when they typically work 38 weeks a year. Obviously, dividing by 52 rather than 38 greatly reduces their average weekly earnings. This affects the numbers significantly when you consider 77 percent of the 4,007,908 teachers in the United States are women.
Women over 40 years of age have three less years of experience than men of the same age, which is generally caused by women leaving the workforce for some period to raise their children. This accounts for roughly a third of the so-called gender pay gap. But can you really put a price on having those three years with your children? If you could, it would be a hell of lot more than 3 years in an office!
American women are fierce! They are smart and determined, and most make personal and professional decisions that are best for themselves and their families. How much money someone makes is not the best barometer of their happiness. In fact, at the end of the day it’s probably the least important.
A Note About the Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.):
The Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.) was first passed by the U.S. Congress in 1972 but, because it was ratified by only 35 states, failed to gain the states necessary for ratification by three.
Almost 40 years later, Nevada, Illinois and Virginia finally rounded out the 38 states needed for ratification. However, it will still take an act of Congress to decide if the legislation is enforceable since legislators missed the original 1979 deadline, then the extended 1982 deadline. Another wrinkle is that, throughout the years, five states voted to rescind their original ratifications.
The central focus of the E.R.A. is to ensure that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” We obviously agree with that statement 1000% but are unsure of why we need a constitutional amendment to make this point because it’s already addressed in the United States Constitution.
The Fourteenth Amendment is very clear: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
In truth, the U.S. Supreme Court has already litigated the point. In the case of Reed v. Reed – a case challenging an Idaho Probate Code that said “males must be preferred to females” in appointing administrators of estates – the Supreme Court ruled in an unanimous decision that “to give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other, merely to accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits, is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment…the choice in this context may not lawfully be mandated solely on the basis of sex.”
This was followed by other cases such as Frontiero v. Richardson, a case argued by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that “dissimilar treatment for men and women who are similarly situated” is unconstitutional.
But beyond all that, there are already targeted protections in place to protect women, including the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Violence Against Women Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. It would be far more effective to strengthen these issue-specific laws instead of trying to pass something that crams every issue that remotely pertains to women into one toothless amendment.