There's no denying the wage gap with #EqualPayDay
Count your change, folks, because it all adds up.
Today is Equal Pay Day, an annual reminder that American women working full-time make $0.79 for every dollar a man takes home.
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That gap is based on median income and experts say it deprives women of $10,762 every year, or nearly $500 billion collectively.
The lost potential earnings are worse for women of color; African-American and Latina women are paid on average $0.60 and $0.55, respectively. Asian women, who earn $0.84 for every dollar, fare better, though some ethnic subgroups are paid much less.
You may have heard about this pay gap from Facebook, which said Tuesday it had eliminated pay disparities at the company, or from the national women's soccer team, which recently filed a wage discrimination complaint against U.S. Soccer, or from Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who talk about the issue frequently on the campaign trail.
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The #EqualPayDay hashtag on Twitter made the subject a top trending topic as users shared tweets, think pieces, graphs, videos to make their case for equal pay.
President Obama marked the occasion by designating the Sewall-Belmont House & Museum in Washington, D.C., a national monument. The museum holds a comprehensive collection of documents and artifacts related to the women's suffrage and equal rights movements.
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Critics of Equal Pay Day and the wage gap argue that it simplifies a complicated issue. Indeed, explicit sexism isn't the only reason women make less than men.
They often choose careers like teaching and caregiving, which pay less than jobs in male-dominated industries, such as engineering or construction. Women sometimes leave the workforce to care for children or family members, which affects their long-term earnings.
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Yet, research also shows that women encounter cultural and institutional barriers to equal pay. Negotiating while female isn't a straightforward and merit-based process, but can instead be influenced by biases about how we view assertive women.
Research also shows that pay actually drops when when large numbers of women enter a male-dominated field, which may reflect cultural attitudes on how to value work when it's done by a woman.
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Those who remain skeptical of the wage gap might look to industry leaders like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Salesforce, which have reviewed employee salaries in order to eliminate disparities.
In a recent blog post, Lori Matloff Goler, VP of people at Facebook, said the company regularly analyzes its compensation practices to ensure men and women performing similar work earn the same amount.
The possibility of unequal pay is real in the technology industry. Hired, an online jobs marketplace, released a new study coinciding with Equal Pay Day, which offered a stark reminder of the differences in salaries offered to men and women in the industry.
The results show that 69% of the time, women were offered less money than men for the same role. The average difference in salary offered was about 3% — but the gender pay gap was sometimes as wide as 30% at some of the companies surveyed.
Such research has helped turn the wage gap into an important issue this election year as the U.S. presidential candidates vie for female voters as well as voters who believe in gender equality.
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“At a time when women’s wages are so critical to the economic well-being of families, the country is counting on lawmakers to work together to advance strong fair and family friendly workplace policies that would promote equal pay,"said Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families in a statement. "There is no time to waste.”
Additional reporting contributed by Samantha Cooney.
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Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes. Rebecca has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a masters degree from U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
