|
Orie Leads
Equal Pay Day Rally to Focus Attention on Wage Gap
HARRISBURG -- Senator
Jane Orie (R-40) today led a bipartisan group of legislators and a number of
prominent statewide women's organizations in a 2006 Pennsylvania Equal Pay Day
Rally and Press Conference at the state capitol in Harrisburg.
The rally and
press conference were organized to draw attention to the persistent gaps in
wages between men and women and to show support for national efforts to close
the wage gap.
Orie is
sponsoring a Senate Resolution marking April 26 as Equal Pay Day in the
Commonwealth. April 25 is also the National Equal Pay Day.
The resolution
recognizes April 25 as Equal Pay Day, because women have to work an entire year
and then until the middle of April of the next year to earn as much as a man did
in one year. Weekly, women have to work until Tuesday of the following week, to
earn what a man earned in the prior week
"At the current
rate of change, working women will not achieve equal pay until after the year
2050," Orie said. "That's almost 100 years after President Kennedy signed the
Equal Pay Act into law, prohibiting discrimination based on sex resulting in
unequal pay for equal work."
Orie said
current statistics show that women in the workforce have continually encountered
the problem of lower salaries than men for equal work. Despite legislation on
both the federal and state levels banning discrimination, differences persist
between genders.
"Pay equity is a growing national
movement. States around the country are introducing pay equity legislation and
women continue to recognize the importance of this legislation," Orie said.
"Women have made great strides in all professional fields, from politics to
medicine to teaching and technology. But the fact remains that they still do
not receive equal pay for the work they do. This is something that we must
remedy for the sake of economic fairness."
 
|
