Remarks on Equal Pay Day
Statement
I'm here this morning as the father of a young daughter, as the husband of a brilliant lawyer and former federal prosecutor, as the brother of another remarkable attorney, and as the son of a former teacher. So, Equal Pay Day is very personal to me. It's personal on two levels. First, the very notion that this equal pay is still an issue we even have to talk about is unthinkable. This inequity should have been resolved a long, long time ago. I can't believe women are still standing out in the cold -- and rain! Second, I care deeply about our community and this state and when you look at the numbers, the lack of equal pay is simply devastating to our local economy.
We've heard the facts. Women in our state earn just 80 cents for every dollar a man does for similar work. That's only a penny better than the national average -- even though the cost of living here is significantly higher. African-American women and Latinas earn even less. And the pay gap isn't targeted at any one industry, group or occupation. Women who are financial advisors earn about seventy percent of their male counterparts; lawyers 82 percent; postsecondary teachers 84 percent; doctors 71 percent; construction managers 84 percent. Why should any woman be paid a single penny less than a man simply because of her gender?
It's staggering to think that it would take a woman working full-time more than three extra months to make up the difference between what she and her male coworkers earned in the previous 12 months. To put things in perspective, imagine your boss telling you he was only going to pay you for Monday through Thursday. You would probably walk out of the office on the spot. And on the way out, probably tell your boss a few choice things I probably shouldn't say here.
Some people argue that the pay gap occurs over time, because of factors like parenthood or hours worked. But did you know that college-educated women working full-time were paid an unexplained 7 percent less than their male counterparts, just one year after graduation. There's obviously a systemic problem.
Being on the short-end of the salary stick, as Forbes Magazine reported, causes greater difficulty in repaying student loans and forces women to fall further and further behind over time, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetimes. And when women take home smaller paychecks, entire families have to make do with less to put a roof over their heads, food on the table or send their kids to college. Most families with children today rely on a woman's earnings just as much, oftentimes more, than a man's earnings.
Put aside that its plain wrong, we also know that closing the pay gap will help our economy. The president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research estimates that closing the pay gap would grow our economy by at least three to four percentage points -- a $3 trillion dollar impact over time. That would be a huge stimulus for the ailing New Jersey economy.
Like any parents, my wife, Marla, and I tell our young children that if they work hard and do well in school, they can be anything they want to be when they grow up. We live in a time where three women currently sit on the Supreme Court, women occupy twenty percent of all Congressional seats, and scores sit in America's boardrooms -- and a woman is running for President of the United States. The sky should be the limit, for all of our sons and our daughters. That can't happen when we don't even pay men and women equally.
We can and must do better. Congress must pass the Paycheck Fairness Act and bring the 50- year-old Equal Pay Act into the 21st century.
As Susan B. Anthony said, "There is so much yet to be done." Let's start with this today. Let's get it done.
Thank you.
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