[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 34 (Tuesday, March 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1419-H1425]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ECONOMIC EQUITY FOR WOMEN
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bob Schaffer of Colorado). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentlewoman from the
District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized for 60 minutes as the
designee of the minority leader.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to lead a special order on economic
equity for women. I expect to be joined by other women Members of
Congress, perhaps by some men as well. They would be welcome. I have
already been joined by the energetic and able gentlewoman from New York
(Mrs. Maloney), to whom I will yield in a few moments.
I come to the floor this evening during this special Women's History
Month, Mr. Speaker. During this month, women Members, and we are
proudly 50 Members strong in this House, of course, when you consider
that there are 440 Members, we are the first to concede that we are
proud, but not pleased, but we are proud to honor Women's History Month
by participating in a number of floor speeches simply to keep before
this body what I know most Members would not want to forget, and that
is that women's issues increasingly dominate much of what concerns
America, often as family issues.
This evening I want to devote my own time to discussion of specific
aspects of economic equity, but I remind the body that this general
subject covers a multitude of problems, among them old-fashioned
discrimination against women in everything from sports to jobs, women's
new rise in small business, women's special place as now primary in
their dependence for their economic survival and benefit on a whole set
of gender neutral economic programs, among them Social Security.
We say watch when you change Social Security, particularly when you
talk about privatization, that you do not forget who lives the longest
and who is most dependent on Social Security, and consider whether or
not they will quickly and freely enter the market, particularly since
it is low wage workers, among whom women are the predominant group who
are most dependent on Social Security.
The earned income tax credit where many women, this very month,
simply would have thousands of dollars in reduction in pay were it not
for the earned income tax credit, which goes in this country
predominantly to women who are, again, the low paid workers of America,
minimum wage.
We got a minimum wage through, I think in no small part because this
body understood it was talking about women, women vote, and women
understood that that vote was a women's vote because two-thirds of
those who qualify for the minimum wage, in a very real sense, to our
shame, are women and women with children at that.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney)
and thank her for coming to the floor to speak on an aspect of this
subject.
Mrs. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for
yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my colleagues from the Women's
Caucus as we work to bring greater attention to the issue of economic
equity for women.
I thank my colleague, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia
(Ms. Norton) for her valuable leadership, both of the Women's Caucus
and on this critical issue.
I do want to note that, in her notice for this special order on
economic equity for women, she cites a quote from the United States
Bureau of the Census. And I would like to read this quote into the
Record. It says, ``The median earnings of women with a strong
commitment to workforce were $23,710 while those of men were a
substantially greater $32,144.''
I would like to bring notice to this, not only for the important data
that is below that points out the discrepancy between the earnings
between men and women, but as an example of how we use census data over
and over again in our everyday lives to know where we are as a Nation,
where we are going as a Nation. Without good data, we are just another
opinion.
This is one example of how the census data helps us track the
progress or lack thereof of women in the workforce and that we,
likewise, need to work for a fair and accurate census that is coming
up.
Mr. Speaker, the Women's History Month is traditionally a time to
highlight women's achievements and an opportunity to increase public
awareness of the unique contributions women have made throughout
history.
It is true that American women have made great strides. Women break
through more personal and professional barriers every day, and we all
should take pride in these many accomplishments. But we cannot afford
to rest on these laurels, because the facts also show that there is a
great deal of work that needs to be done.
The sad reality is, almost 35 years after the Equal Pay Act was
passed, there is still a huge wage gap. In fact, women earned equal pay
in only two out of 90 jobs tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in
1995.
While the wage gap has narrowed by 15 percent since 1981, white women
still make just 74 cents on the dollar to a male dollar. The situation
is worse for the women of color. The wage gap for African-American
women is 64 cents to the male dollar. For Hispanic women, it is 53
cents. This fact should make us all angry. We should all be indignant
when women are not paid the same as men for the same exact same job,
comparable work.
Pay inequity is yet another example of the lingering sexism and
racism that is still in our society. Most of the wage gap cannot be
explained away by differences in education, experience, or other
legitimate qualifications. Even among recent college graduates, women
earned 15.7 percent less than male graduates. While there has been some
real progress, there is still a cultural bias against, in some cases,
women workers.
There are still antiquated perceptions that women possibly do not
need
[[Page H1420]]
as much money as men, but they do. Women support their families. Their
income is very much an important part of a two-wage family income. Yet,
great women are supporting their families alone. As many as one in five
American families are headed by women. Many two-parent families could
not make it without both incomes.
Clearly, economic equality is a fundamental issue for women. It goes
straight to the heart of how we care for our families and the roles we
play in our communities and the security of our retirement years, which
my colleague is focusing on and mentioned earlier.
Women continue to battle the glass ceiling, and virtually every
profession is now open to us. But women have not yet broken the wage
barrier. The notion of equal pay for equal work is so basic to the
values of this country. If we genuinely want an equal society, we need
to show women we value their work.
This country can do better. We must do better. And we are working to
achieve it.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record ``101 Facts On The Status of
Working Women'', which is important information that we need to look at
during this Women's History Month:
101 Facts on the Status of Working Women
Women and the labor force
1. In January 1997, there were 105 million women age 16 and
over in the U.S. Of that total, 62.7 million (59.7%) were in
the civilian labor force (persons working or looking for
work).
2. The U.S. Department of Labor is projecting that between
1994 and 2005, women's labor force participation will
increase from 46 to 48%--nearly double the growth rate for
men.
3. In 1995, 3.6 million women held more than one job.
4. In 1995, 60% of all employed women worked in
traditionally female dominated occupations.
5. Two out of every three temporary workers are women.
6. Women comprised 44% of the total number employed in
executive, administrative and managerial positions in 1996,
up from 39% in 1988.
7. In 1996, 42% of women in executive, administrative and
managerial positions were employed in the service industry,
compared to 31% of men. Women are also much less likely than
men to be employed in manufacturing, construction,
transportation and public utilities.
8. Of the 1,960,000 engineers in the U.S. in 1996, only
167,000 (9%) were women, up from 2% in 1976.
pay equity
9. Since 1981, the wage gap has narrowed from 59% to 71% in
1996--a decline of less than a penny per year.
10. The wage gap for African American women is 64 cents to
a white man's dollar; for Hispanic women it is 53 cents.
11. The average woman loses approximately $420,000 over a
lifetime due to unequal pay practices.
12. The total amount of wages lost due to pay inequity was
over $130 billion in 1995.
13. About 60% of the improvement in the wage gap during the
last 15 years can be attributed to the decline in men's real
earnings.
14. According to a recent report, between one-third and
one-half of the wage difference between men and women cannot
be explained by differences in experience, education, or
other legitimate qualifications.
15. Demonstrating that there is still not equal pay for
equal work, in 1995 female sales workers earned 43.1%, female
managers 32%, female college professors 22%, administrative
support 22%, health technologists and technicians 18%, female
elementary school teachers 12%, and female nurses 3.1% less
than their male colleagues.
16. At all educational levels, women suffer from a wage gap
compared to male workers. College educated women earn $14,217
a year less than college educated white men, and only $794
more than white men who have never taken a college course.
17. College educated African American and Hispanic women
annually earn $17,549 and $14,779 less, respectively, than
their white male colleagues, and college educated African
American women earn $2,558 less than white male high school
graduates.
18. Even among recent college graduates, women earn 15.7%
less than men.
19. While women constituted 46% of the work force in 1995,
over 63% of all workers earning the minimum wage or below
were women.
20. The median weekly earnings for all men in 1996 was
$557, compared to $418 for all women, $362 for African
American women, and $316 for Hispanic women.
21. Women in unions in 1995 earned weekly wages that were
35% higher than women who were not union members.
22. Poverty rates are higher at every age for women who
live alone or with non-relatives than for their male
counterparts.
women-owned businesses
23. According to the National Foundation for Women Business
Owners, there are nearly eight million women-owned businesses
in the U.S., employing over 18.5 million people and
generating close to $2.3 trillion in sales.
24. In 1996, women-owned firms accounted for over one-third
(36%) of all firms in the country, and provided employment
for one out of every four (26%) U.S. workers.
25. The growth of women-owned businesses is outpacing
overall business growth by nearly two to one, with an average
of 1,400 starting each day.
26. Between 1987 and 1996, the number of women-owned firms
increased by 78% nationwide, employment by these firms
increased by 183%, and sales grew by 236%.
27. Women-owned firms are more likely to remain in business
than the average U.S. firm. Nearly three-fourths of women-
owned firms in business in 1991 were still in business three
years later, compared to two-thirds of all U.S. firms.
28. An estimated 3.5 million women-owned businesses are
home-based and employ 14 million full- and part-time workers.
29. Women business owners are more likely than all business
owners to offer flex-time, tuition reimbursement, and profit
sharing, and are more likely than men to volunteer and to
encourage their employees to volunteer.
30. Women will own 40 to 50% of all U.S. businesses by the
year 2000.
women in the fortune 500
31. According to a 1996 Catalyst study of the Fortune 500
companies, 1,302 out of 13,013 (10%) corporate officers are
women, up from 8.7% in 1994.
32. A total of 394 companies (78%) have one or more women
corporate officers, up from 77% in 1994, and 105 companies
(21%) have no women corporate officers, down from 23% in
1994.
33. Student Loan Marketing Association (Sallie Mae) is the
only company with women in more than half (57%) of corporate
officer positions.
34. Women comprise 57 (2.4%) of the 3,430 highest corporate
rank positions (chairman, vice chairman, CEO, president, COO,
EVP).
35. The highest level of women corporate officers can be
found in savings institutions (22%), while the lowest level
is found in brokerage firms (4%).
36. Only 47 (1.9%) of the 2,500 top earners in the Fortune
500 are women.
37. Of all of the Fortune 500 companies, 417 have women on
the board of directors, but only 177 (35%) have two or more
women. Eighty-three companies (17%) have no women on their
boards.
38. The rate of increase of women on boards is actually
decreasing--it grew by 9% in 1994, 7% in 1995, and 3% in
1996.
39. Only 626 (10.2%) out of 6,123 of board positions are
held by women.
40. A total of 53 women of color sit on boards (12.6% of
women board members, 1.4% of total members).
41. The industry with highest number of women on boards is
the soap/cosmetics industry with 19%, while the mail/package/
freight delivery industry has the lowest number, with only
3%.
42. The industries with the highest percentage of companies
with no women on boards (43%) are computers/data service,
engineering and construction.
43. There is a direct correlation between the number of
women on a company's board and the number of women serving as
corporate officers and at the highest corporate level at that
company. Companies with one woman board member have an
average of 7.1% women at the highest corporate levels,
whereas those with three or more women on the board have
30.4%.
women in politics
44. Four women serve in the Cabinet of the second Clinton
Administration.
45. Two women occupy seats on the U.S. Supreme Court.
46. In 1997, women hold nine (9% of the 100 seats of U.S.
Senate and 51 (11.7%) of the 435 seats in the U.S. House of
Representatives. In addition, two women serve as Delegates to
the House representing the District of Columbia and the
Virgin Islands.
47. Of the 62 women serving in the 105th Congress
(including the two Delegates), 12 are African American, four
are Hispanic, one is Asian American/Pacific Islander and one
is Caribbean American.
48. California has sent more women to Congress than any
other state--a total of 21. Seven states have never elected a
woman to either the U.S. House or Senate. They are: Alaska,
Delaware, Iowas, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Vermont and
Wisconsin.
49. Currently, two women serve as governors of their states
and 18 women serve as lieutenant governors.
50. Women hold 25.1% of the 3223 available statewide
elected executive offices in 1997, an increase from 18.2% in
1992.
51. In 1997, 1,597 (21.5%) of the 7, 424 state legislators
are women, up from 18.3% in 1991 and 5.6% in 1973.
52. Of the 100 largest American cities, 12 have women
mayors.
older women's issues
53. Women on average can expect to live 19 years into
retirement while men can expect to live 15 years.
54. In 1993, 48% of women employed full-time by private
employers were participating in an employer-provided
retirement plan.
55. Almost 12 million women work for small firms that do
not offer pension plans.
56. Only 39% of all working women and fewer than 17% of
part-time working women are covered by a pension plan.
[[Page H1421]]
57. Less than 33% of all women retirees age 55 and over
receive pension benefits, compared to 55% of male retirees.
58. The median amount of women's pensions is $250 monthly,
compared to $650 for men.
59. Two-thirds of working women are employed in sectors of
the economy that have the lowest pension coverage rate,
including the service and retail sectors.
60. Workers covered by union agreements are nearly twice as
likely to have a pension. Women, however, are half as likely
to be in these jobs.
61. Since women change jobs more frequently than men--women
stay with an employer for an average of 5.8 years, compared
to 7.6 years for men--many women leave jobs before they reach
the required years of service to qualify for employment
retirement plans, usually five to seven years.
62. Only 20% of all widows receive a survivor pension,
which is usually only 50% of what their husbands benefits had
been.
63. Fewer than one-fourth of divorced women age 62 and
older receive any employer-sponsored pension income, whether
from their own or their ex-husband's past work. Often,
divorced women are left with no share of their ex-husband's
pension, even after a long marriage.
64. In 1995 women comprised only 58% of the total elderly
population but comprised 74% of the elderly poor. Older women
are twice as likely as older men to be poor, and nearly 40%
of older women living alone live in or near poverty level.
65. A widowed woman is four times more likely, and a single
or divorced women five times more likely, to live in poverty
after retirement than a married woman.
66. Of all unmarried women age 65 and older, 40% rely on
Social Security for 90 % or more of their household income.
67. The U.S. has the greatest percentage of elderly women
in poverty of all the major industrialized nations.
working families
68. The net increase in family incomes between 1973 and
1993 was driven almost entirely by the gains for married
couples with working wives, the only family type for which
real income increased significantly over the period.
69. Despite the fact that employed mothers and fathers work
in similarly sized organizations, fewer mothers than fathers
are eligible for coverage under the Family and Medical Leave
Act (FMLA) because of women's higher rate of part-time
employment.
70. In 1960, women were the sole support of less than 10%
of all families. In 1994, this figure was 18.1%. Of these,
38.6% had incomes below poverty level.
71. Most women will spend 17 years caring for children and
18 years helping an elderly parent. Eighty-nine percent of
all women over age 18 will be caregivers to children, parents
or both.
72. Less than one-fourth of new mothers leave the paid
labor force.
73. Women average 11.5 years out of the paid labor force,
primarily because of care giving responsibilities; men
average 1.3 years.
HEALTH ISSUES
74. It is estimated that 19% of women in the U.S. are
uninsured. Hispanic women are 2.5 times and African Americans
are 1.8 times as likely to be uninsured than white women.
75. Women and their children are disproportionately
represented among the nation's uninsured population,
primarily due to women's segregation in service and retail
jobs, which have low rates of employer-provided insurance and
low wages. In 1993, 59% of uninsured women were from families
with an annual income of less than $25,000.
76. More than 184,000 women were diagnosed with breast
cancer in 1996 and 44,300 women died from the disease.
Research indicates that universal access to screening
mammography would reduce breast cancer mortality by 30%.
77. Many poor women and women of color do not have access
to mammography screening because they lack health coverage
and earn low wages. Because Medicare requires a woman to pay
a share of the cost, 85% of women covered by Medicare only
(without supplemental coverage) did not have a mammography
screening in 1992 or 1993.
78. More than 52% of uninsured women ages 18-64 did not
have a Pap Test in 1993.
79. Almost one in four women does not receive prenatal care
during the critical first trimester of pregnancy. Hispanic
and African American women are twice as likely as white women
to receive little or no care.
80. While men have higher death rates from many diseases,
women suffer more from chronic and debilitating physical and
mental illnesses. Minority women disproportionately suffer
from the chronic diseases of hypertension, asthma, diabetes
and chronic bronchitis.
81. Older women, ages 65 to 85, frequently suffer from
multiple chronic diseases: 27% suffer from two chronic
diseases and 24% suffer from three or more. Half of women
over 80 suffer from osteoporosis.
82. Almost half (49%) of disabled women have annual incomes
below $15,900; 19% are on Medicaid or receive public aid; and
24% live alone.
83. In 1995, 59% of Medicaid recipients and 60% of Medicare
enrollees were women. Of the women on Medicaid, 61% have been
on for more than two years and 37% for more than five years.
84. Only one-third of women enrolled in Medicare live with
spouses compared to over half of men enrolled in Medicare.
85. Women ages 15-44 had out-of-pocket expenditures for
health care services ($573) that were 68% higher than those
of men of the same age ($342).
86. The most common reasons women give for failure to
obtain clinical preventative services are cost, lack of time
and lack of physician counseling.
87. One in four women report that physicians talk down to
them, and one in six women have been told by a physician that
a problem was ``all in her head.''
violence
88. Each year about one million women become victims of
violence at the hands of an intimate--a husband, ex-husband,
boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend. This is seven times higher than
the rate of violence committed by an intimate against male
victims.
89. In 1994, there was one rape for every 270 women, one
robbery for every 240 women, one assault for every 29 women,
and one homicide for every 23,000 women.
90. Women in families with incomes below $10,000 per year
were more likely than other women to be violently attacked by
an intimate. Geographically, however, women living in central
cities, suburban areas and rural locations experienced
similar rates of violence committed by intimates.
91. Each year nearly one million individuals become victims
of violent crime while working or on duty. Although men were
more likely to be attacked at work by a stranger, women were
more likely to be attacked by someone they knew.
92. One-sixth of all workplace homicides of women are
committed by a spouse, ex-spouse, boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend.
Boyfriends and husbands, both current and former, commit more
than 13,000 acts of violence against women in the workplace
every year.
93. Workplace violence resulted in $42. billion in lost
productivity and legal expenses for American businesses in
1992 alone.
women in higher education
94. Women earn 54% of the B.A.s awarded in the U.S., 52% of
the Masters and professional degrees, and 40% of the
doctorates.
95. The number of colleges and universities headed by women
increased from 5% in 1975 to 10% in 1990. Women of color made
up less than 2% of these high-level administrators.
96. In 1910, 20% of college faculty were female. In 1985,
women comprised only 28% of college faculty. This is only an
eight percentage point increase over a 75 year period.
97. In 1995, women made up only 31% of the full-time
faculty of American colleges and universities, up from 26% in
1920--a five percentage point increase in 75 years.
98. Women make up almost 40% of the full-time faculty at
public junior colleges, but only 20% of positions at top-
ranked public and private research institutions.
women and charitable giving
99. Women direct 43% of all foundations in the U.S.
100. In 1995, women's average annual charitable
contribution was $983, up 26% from 1993. Men's average annual
contribution was $1,057, only a 6% increase since 1993.
101. 1995 was the first year that women donated a larger
share of their annual income than men.
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding. I thank her for
organizing this special order and for all of her work for women,
children, families, and working families in our society.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York for
her valuable contribution. May I also thank her for her very valuable
work as vice chair of the Women's Caucus.
Mr. Speaker, I want to speak this evening specifically on pay equity
for women. This is one of the great issues, working women say their
most important issue, more important than issues which also are among
their great priorities, education and choice and health care. They say
pay equity.
Why should this be so, Mr. Speaker? Well, part of the reason is that
women are now close to half of all the workers in the United States.
Mr. Speaker, that is an enormous increase from just 1996, when not
half, but only less than a third, actually 30 percent of women were in
the workforce.
Why have they come in such numbers? I am not sure that all of them
are like me, Mr. Speaker, born to work. I think that we all know why
women are in the workforce today in such huge and increasing numbers.
{time} 1930
I think we all know that wages have been stagnant since the early
1970s, that even with the splendid economy, the American family has
sent everybody who could work out to work.
First and foremost, it is women and so almost half of the work force
now is female. Perhaps the stagnant wages and increasing entry of women
into the labor force helps us understand why pay equity now shows up in
polls at the
[[Page H1422]]
top, the number 1, top issue for men and women; not women alone, Mr.
Speaker, but men and women.
I would hypothesize that the reason that people are saying that equal
pay or pay equity, traditionally a woman's issue, is at the top of
their agenda, that the reason is that women's pay has now become
central to family income.
When the women go out to work with the men and if there is a male in
the household, he looks at her paycheck and then looks at his, and he
says, how come you are not bringing home what I am bringing home, pay
equity shoots to the top of the agenda, because he is talking about his
family now. What we have seen is truly extraordinary. This women's
issue has morphed into a family issue and into the number 1 issue
according to the polls.
That is driven, Mr. Speaker, not only by the fact that women have
come in such huge numbers into the work force, it is driven by their
lower wages compared to men. Study hard and do your homework, girls are
told, and you can grow up to be anything you desire. I was told that,
even as a skinny little black girl in the segregated public schools of
the District of Columbia.
And so that is exactly what good little girls do; they become good
students. And today, it turns out that they have been good at
everything except getting the equal pay they have earned.
They have cracked open virtually every profession, but they have yet
to crack the wage barrier, Mr. Speaker. They now collect 55 percent of
college degrees. Men, Mr. Speaker, get only 45 percent of college
degrees today. Women get 65 percent of the 3.5 grade point averages.
None of that has done it. Study hard, little girl, and you can grow up
to be anything you desire, so long as you do not ask to be paid the
same as men who do the same work.
I confess, Mr. Speaker, that I have been chasing fair pay for women
for 20 years, since the Carter administration when I chaired the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission. We had the first hearings on pay
equity at the EEOC in 1980, and later commissioned the landmark study
by the National Academy of Sciences that is remembered and referred to
still today because it confirmed that there is comparable pay
discrimination against women.
Mr. Speaker, women today have a comparable pay problem, not an equal
pay problem. A comparable pay problem comes when people, mostly women,
have the same skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions as
men, but get paid less for jobs that are not the same, except in all
the essentials of skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
When I came to Congress, I brought my experience at the EEOC to the
only place that can do something about gender bias. My bill, H.R. 1302,
the Fair Pay Act, now has more than 60 cosponsors; and I thank the
Members of this body who have cosponsored this bill with me. It takes
the pay gap head-on by barring discrimination based on section or race
when jobs are comparable in skill, effort, responsibility, and working
conditions.
The Fair Pay Act would end the discrimination between, for example,
the pay of a probation officer and the pay of his wife, a social
worker. Both these people have gone to college. They may have even come
out at the same time, they work every day. He hears from people who
have been released from jail and may be on probation for years. She
goes into some of the most troubled neighborhoods to work with
disadvantaged people and their children. It is time that the Nation
seriously ask whether we can expect women to continue to pursue higher
education with the same vengeance only to earn close to $800 more than
men who pass up college altogether.
The budget reconciliation bill we have just passed offers tax breaks
to help more women and men go to college. We should engage in some
self-congratulation for that bill passed last year, Mr. Speaker. Now we
must make the incentives to pursue higher education equal for women as
for men. Pursuing pay discrimination will send the signal that college
pays.
Over and over again we say, we need to send more young people to
college. Women have heeded that call so that they can meet the global
competition in greater numbers than men. We do not want to have a
reverse effect after some years when they figure out that college does
not matter in pay.
This signal is surely needed now to counter the danger signals of the
1990s on pay for women. The gender gap has stabilized again.
Mr. Speaker, the increase in closing the gap, or should I say the
``decreasing of the gap,'' has stopped. It stopped at the end of the
1980s. We have seen no real movement since closing in on a man's
dollar, and we keep fluctuating, all in the upper 70s, between 70
percent, sometimes getting as high as 75 percent or 76 percent, but
always going back down in the ensuing year.
The country simply cannot afford another 25 years of wage gap
stability, not with so many women in the work force, not with the
greater call for education, not with family income increasingly
dependent on women's wages. As we have seen by the gender gap
retrenchment of the 1990s, the gap will not close itself, or else it
would have simply continued, unabated, to close.
Congress has an obligation to eliminate the gender discrimination
that sustains the gap. Good girls who go on to be good students deserve
better when they go to work. I think they deserve what my Fair Pay Act
would bring them.
Mr. Speaker, I know that this is not a country that will allow the
rise in real wages for women that we saw during the 1990s to simply top
out, that is it, glass ceiling in wages, you have had it; go on for
another 10, 15 years, and maybe you will slip up again the way you did
in the 1980s. The country will not tolerate that this time. Too many
women in the work force are too dependent on their income. And yet,
between 1979 and 1997, we have seen increases that encouraged us. Women
earned $395 in median weekly earnings in 1979. That $395 turned to $431
by 1997.
Women reached their highest ratio of earnings to men in 1993 when the
ratio was almost 77 percent of a man's dollar. Since 1995, and this is
the bad news, Mr. Speaker, the wage gap has actually increased so that
women in 1997 are showing about 74 percent of men's median earnings.
Some have asked whether or not women have caught the so-called ``male
wage disease.'' That disease is the disease, as it were, that has
stalled men's wages for what seems like an eternity when they stopped
rising in the 1990s. We have every reason to be concerned, Mr. Speaker,
because we are now living in the best of times economically.
The fact is that over and over again we are told by everybody from
the President to the nightly news that we are now living in the longest
period of sustained economic growth since the end of the Second World
War. How then to explain the lack of real growth in women's wages and
in men's wages during the 1990s?
We explained it for men's wages by saying, well, men were in
manufacturing, they were moving overseas, it would all straighten
itself out. In that sense, they are in worse trouble than women,
because it has been downhill all the way with no respite such as women
got during the 1980s when the gap, in fact, was closed.
Mr. Speaker, what concerns me most is that women's wage gap-closing
is not explained by the growth in real wages. A substantial amount of
the closing of the gap is not closing at all. It is because men have
not, in fact, had an increase in their real wages, and that simply
leaves them where they are, or declining, causing women to meet them
more easily than if their wages had continued to go up since the early
1970s.
This, Mr. Speaker, is not what we had in mind when women started to
close the wage gap. We do not mean to do that at the expense of men,
our husbands, our fathers, our brothers; and of course, it is not at
their expense that we are doing it. What these figures show is simply
that they are not rising for whatever reasons women's are and, thus,
there is the appearance of the closing of the gap that is in fact not
the case.
Beyond the fact that much of the closing of the gap of women's wages
is really nothing more than a decline in men's wages, there is also a
serious problem, and that is that most of the closing of the gap is not
due to an increase in women's real wages.
[[Page H1423]]
Mr. Speaker, 41 percent of the closing is due to an increase in
women's real wages, but that leaves 59 percent which comes because of
the decline in men's wages, and Mr. Speaker, the proportion of the gap
that is closed due to the growth in real wages is only 19 percent; and
that is in this decade, the 1990s.
{time} 1945
Compare that to the 1980s, when the proportion of the closure of the
gap for women due to real wage growth was 51 percent. Fifty-one percent
of the gap closed because of real wage increases in the 1980s. Nineteen
percent of the decrease in the gap in the 1990s is due to an increase
in real wages for women. That is unsatisfactory, Mr. Speaker, and it
tells us perhaps all we need to know about why pay equity has found
itself at the top of the agenda for men and for women.
We are talking family business here, Mr. Speaker. It is family wages
that are falling. There is no such thing as women's wages anymore.
Women are single heads of households. Imagine what this slow-up in the
rise in women's wages means to women who have to support children by
themselves.
A third of all children in this country are born out of wedlock. Many
more simply live for huge periods of time after divorce or separation
with their mothers alone. These women are out here trying to make it on
a woman's wage. Even when a woman is part of a two-earner household,
men are so disquieted by the failure of the woman to bring home her
fair pay that they have joined with women to put pay equity at the top
of the list, at least according to the polls; a serious, serious
problem.
Mr. Speaker, to get some sense of just how serious it is and why this
body needs to pay attention to it, and I offer my Fair Pay Act as one
approach at hand, an example comes out of what has happened to the pay
of the women one would most expect to be ahead of the game.
Let us look at women with Bachelor's Degrees. Mr. Speaker, they
earned $28,701 in 1996. A man with a Bachelor's Degree earned $46,702.
Let us look at high school graduates. A woman with a high school
education earned $16,161, Mr. Speaker. A man with a high school
education earned $27,642.
Even if we consider that there are some reasons to discount part of
this discrepancy, such as perhaps the woman has taken some time out to
have children, perhaps the woman, and these are all either high school
or college graduates, perhaps the woman has taken some time to have a
part-time job, but can you really tell me that the difference should be
almost $20,000 between a man who graduated from college and a woman who
graduated from college? That gap is simply too great to be explained
away by any explanation except some degree of discrimination in wages
for women.
We think that discrimination comes because, Mr. Speaker, wages in
this country and throughout the world have been designed for women.
When a job is a traditional women's job, throughout human time, that
fact and that fact alone has depressed the wage scale. What the Fair
Pay Act asks is that one eliminate that factor and that factor alone
from wage-setting.
My bill respects the market system. I am not crazy. This is a free
market system, and I do not want to change it one bit in that regard.
But the free market system does not allow men and women who do the same
work to be paid dissimilarly, and the reason is because discrimination
is not a market factor, or at least it is not a legitimate market
factor.
In the same way, the free market system should not allow
discrimination to be a factor in the difference between what a
probation officer and a social worker receive. Assuming they are
measured objectively by the grade point scale widely used throughout
industry, they are performing work that is comparable in skill, effort
and responsibility, and working conditions.
Mr. Speaker, there are a number of ways to rectify this matter. I
shall be speaking about the filing of a complaint, but I would like to
speak to an old-fashioned market system way to rectify this
discrimination. That is through collective bargaining.
In every market system one way to legitimately raise wages is simply
to bargain for increases, and the theory of bargaining for increases is
that the market will keep the union from getting more of an increase
than the market will bear. If it does not, workers will be laid off or
other sacrifices will have to be made, and the employer's bargaining
position in a market system will keep the wage from becoming higher
than the market should allow.
I believe we should take a very close look at what unions have done
to bring pay equity for women. It is worth noting that white union
women earn $151 more than their counterparts who are not unionized, a
38 percent difference; that black union women earn $73 more than their
counterparts who are not unionized.
Mr. Speaker, these figures are weekly earnings, of course. That
figure is an 18.5 percent difference. Hispanic women earn $24 more per
week than their nonunion counterparts. That is a 6 percent difference.
Looked at at the bottom line, women who are in unions are about one-
third closer to union white men's earnings.
Why does this occur through unionization? Why are women increasingly
coming to unionization? Why are so many people of color attracted to
unionization? Because it tends to standardize wages in and of itself by
the way bargaining occurs, and therefore, naturally, to eliminate some
of this wage disparity and to reduce wage gaps.
Of course, the fact that women and minorities have a voice in wage-
setting through their unions and the democratic practices of unions
means that they can exert pressure on their unions to keep men and
women's wages from getting out of line. If the difference is out of
line and their consciousness is sufficiently raised, then they can in
fact democratically compel their union to bring about greater
equalization.
Unions themselves, frankly, have stepped to the forefront often to
raise the consciousness of their own members, rather than the other way
around. I would like to offer some examples, because I think that they
point up what can be done using this traditional market system
approach.
AFCSME, which by the way also represents many Federal workers, in the
private sector has raised over $1 billion in wage adjustments alone for
women workers. This is the American Federation of State and Municipal
Employees.
Their Minnesota pay equity contract is particularly noteworthy.
AFCSME in fact bargained for a pay equity study in 1985, and looking at
comparable skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions,
AFCSME got a contract that provided $21.7 million to reduce wage and
equity in female-dominated jobs. That was an approximate increase of 9
percent, and it occurred without reducing the number of jobs for women
in State government, where this landmark win took place.
That is important to note, again, because the way in which collective
bargaining works, if the union finds that it is asking for an increase
that the employer will make up for by laying off women or other
workers, it gets nowhere. So again, the market system, using collective
bargaining, disciplines how one bargains for increases in wages
involving pay equity for women. It is a wonderfully neat and classic
approach to improving wages for women.
Occasionally this straight-out collective bargaining will not do it.
Occasionally, therefore, there have been strikes. In 1981, AFCSME Local
101, Council 57, had to go on strike. This occurred in the City of San
Jose, California. What happened as a result, however, was a $1.5
million increase in female-dominated jobs.
It says something about a union that is willing to go on strike to
bring pay fairness to its women workers, because it means that the men
and women went on strike. And if the strike was successful, and it was,
it was a nine-day strike, by the way, and it was, then what it means is
the employer in fact gave an increase, but obviously, not from his
point of view, more of an increase than the market would bear.
Another union, SEIU, Service Employees International Union, has moved
aggressively in the pay equity area. I am most intrigued by a
settlement they won in 1987 in San Francisco.
Essentially what SEIU did was to negotiate a $35 million settlement
with the City of San Francisco. In order to
[[Page H1424]]
do that, the city had to put a referendum on the ballot, and the pay
equity referendum passed by 60 percent. Twelve thousand workers
benefited. Here we see a combination of democracy, collective
bargaining, and pay equity for workers.
{time} 2000
SEIU deserves a lot of credit for being among the first to raise the
issue of pay equity for men of color as well as for women. SEIU has
forced a study that shows that in L.A. County, 81 percent of the jobs
were sex-segregated and 21 percent were segregated by race. This is the
kind of study that often produces action through collective bargaining,
Mr. Speaker.
More recently, in 1994, there was another pay equity victory for the
SEIU. The Local 715 in Santa Clara, California won nearly $30 million
through achieving changes in job classifications of traditionally
women-dominated jobs and jobs dominated by minority workers. In the
end, these workers were brought to the wage levels of mixed-gender
occupations.
Mr. Speaker, the National Education Association represents not only
teachers, but many education support personnel who have been left
behind. The NEA has had some notable success in negotiating pay equity
for these support workers in various school districts. More than two
dozen contracts to be exact; 14,000 personnel affected.
The estimate is that over a worker's career, their pay equity program
has brought raises of a minimum of $10,000 for most of the employees
involved, and as much as $40,000 in the career earnings for many
others.
In 1991, the utility workers of America negotiated a pay equalization
increase at Southern California Gas Company. Traditional female-
dominated jobs saw increases of 15 percent. Typical of the occupation
comparisons was the case of the female customer service representative
who was equalized with the male service representative or meter reader.
That is the way it is parsed out. The inside job is less, the outside
job is more. Maybe it should be. But, in fact, often when we look at
skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions, that should not
be the case.
The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International, Local 34,
negotiated a famous contract with my own university, Yale, where I went
to law school, in 1988 for its clerical and technical workers, winning
for these female-dominated occupations 24 to 35 percent over 4 years,
and they had to go on strike to do it. I was on the Yale Corporation at
time. Yale held out for a long time. There was a 10-week strike. It was
the first pay equity strike in the private sector.
Mr. Speaker, if workers have to do that, they have got to do that.
Hopefully, more and more employers will see that it is in their best
interest to settle these matters peacefully, a strike peacefully, but a
strike, of course, is almost inherently peaceful. But I would hope that
most employers would understand that it is in their best interest to
raise the wages of women workers so that they do not have people doing
comparable work who are paid less than men who sit beside them or who
work outdoors doing comparable work.
The Newspaper Guild, perhaps some think of that as an unlikely union
for pay equity, but it is no such thing. Here there have been three pay
equity increases in three different newspapers. Examples of jobs that
have been equalized are the female insider classified sales jobs and
the historic male outside sales jobs.
Mr. Speaker, nonunion workers may also get themselves into voluntary
associations of one kind or another to try to negotiate pay equity
disparities, but they will be at a severe disadvantage. They may
advocate, but each and every one of these cases have required technical
expertise, political support and financial resources. Pay equity case
or matter cannot be argued without enormous backup. It must be shown
that the skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions are
indeed unequal. That is not the case simply because the man in the
workplace earns more than the woman in the workplace. The jobs may not
be comparable. Most jobs are not comparable. Complainants have got to
find in the same workplace two jobs that are comparable and then have
to show by a very detailed and technical study that each and every one
of these areas, when added up, should result in the same pay. Mr.
Speaker, it is a very difficult thing to do, and cannot be done by
getting on a PC and figuring it out. It takes lawyers, economists,
statisticians, and a whole host of skills. That is why unions have
proved most valuable to women and people of color in correcting pay
disparity.
Tom Donahue, a good friend and former Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-
CIO, said it best in a hearing in the 1980's: Bargaining about wage
rates is something, after all, that we have been doing for decades.
That is what unions do.
I recognize that not everyone in this body favors unions or
collective bargaining, strange as that may seem in a great democracy
like ours. But that is indeed the case. It is either going to be done
through that traditional market-oriented approach, collective
bargaining, or my Fair Pay Act would do it for nonunion workers and,
for that matter, for union workers if the union cannot or does not move
forward. And one way or the other, look at the polls. We will see that
the American family is demanding that we do something about it.
Mr. Speaker, this discrimination in wages results in no small part
because women have only a limited number of occupations, really about
six major occupations to which they have essentially been consigned. If
a woman walks into a workplace and says, ``What jobs do you have
open,'' Mr. Speaker, if we would like to do the testing, what will
happen is the woman will be sent to the woman's track and the employer
will not even recognize what he is doing. It is just what he has always
done and the company has done for decades. And what happens results in
crowding often of qualified and overqualified people into a few job
categories whose talents could take them almost anywhere in the
workplace.
The way to undo this is to bring it to the employer's attention, make
them undo it, make them understand that it is against the law and the
law then has a deterrent effect and it begins to then undo itself, as
much discrimination does today. It is discrimination that has reduced
these wages.
Mr. Speaker, I repeat, where these wages are unequal, and the cause
is not discrimination, I do not call for equalization. I am not trying
to build a command wage-setting economy. Not only do I respect the
market economy, I glory in what it can do. Of course when it does not
do what it is supposed to do, that is what this body is here for, to
make sure that people do not unduly suffer while the economic cycle
works its way out.
I am talking about pinpointing the discrimination factor in wage-
setting, and only the discrimination factor, and I am talking about
making the woman do that as a plaintiff if the matter were to turn out
to be a discrimination suit.
Mr. Speaker, my backup on that, and perhaps my preference, is
collective bargaining. Ultimately, though, we have got to take
responsibility for this. We cannot keep sending the woman out to work
or having her, as in most cases, go out to work on her own or having
her have the responsibility for the family income on her own and saying
you are on your own; if you encounter comparable pay discrimination,
you are still on your own. Discrimination, and only discrimination is
what I am after, Mr. Speaker.
The women of America have so many priorities that we often lose sight
of what really is the priority. Is it child care? Is it osteoporosis?
Is it breast cancer? Is it affirmative action? Women have spoken in
unison with the men. They say it is pay equity. I am out here working
every day and want the same pay that I would get if I were a man going
out here on the job. If I do not get it, give me a statute that gives
me a tool, and employers will begin to do it on their own.
Nobody in this body would want to say to a woman who was a 911
operator, an emergency service operator, that she is worth less than
her husband who is a fire dispatcher. Can my colleagues imagine what it
is like to sit at 911? I can tell you one thing, Mr. Speaker, it is
probably more hectic than it is to be a fire dispatcher, unless fires
occur every moment. It is time we said to working women that they are
on their own except when you encounter discrimination, and then the
Congress of the United States is with them.
[[Page H1425]]
The Fair Pay Act, like the AEPA or the Equal Pay Act, the historic
landmark statute that we passed in 1963, will root out the
discrimination I am after without tampering with the market system. A
woman may file a discrimination claim, but as in all discrimination
cases, she must prove that the gap between herself and a male co-worker
doing comparable work is discrimination and no other reason such as,
first and foremost, legitimate market factors. Gender is not a
legitimate market factor.
Mr. Speaker may I inquire how much time I have remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bob Schaffer of Colorado). The
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) has 3 minutes
remaining.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to use my remaining time to
thank the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) chairman of the
Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary of the
Committee on Appropriations. I appeared before him to seek an increase
for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I had twice sought
such an increase, and have once gotten one on the floor with the
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt) as the cosponsor. And, again,
as chair of the Women's Caucus, when we sent a letter the chairman had
been responsive to us.
This year I tried a different approach and said to Chairman Rogers
that I sought support for the President's call for a $37 million
increase for the EEOC, which has a serious backlog and runs backlogs
every year, but I sought it in a different way, in a way that would
keep the EEOC from coming back for annual increases. I raise this now
because the EEOC is vitally important to women. Pay equity, sexual
discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, job discrimination comes
through its doors and through its complaint process.
We had an extraordinary case, the Mitsubishi case here, involving
virtually pornographic, outrageous actions by male co-workers, and the
whole Women's Caucus got involved. Essentially what I said to the
gentleman from Kentucky is that I would like to have the EEOC do
something comparable to what I tried to leave in place when I was at
the EEOC, which was a system of alternative dispute resolution, a way
that processes cases rapidly, using settlement techniques, and a way
that I found also increased the awards to women because after a woman
has remained in the system for 2 years, she is likely to get no award
at all because the evidence falls away. If she settles, she gets often
some money, assuming the case is worthy.
Chairman Rogers was intrigued by the notion that EEOC might not come
back every year if they got an increase this time, and put in place
structural changes that would then last for some considerable number of
years.
{time} 2015
That is what happened when I was at EEOC. I said, forget this
increase. You will not see me again.
I was at the EEOC for 4 years. I never came back on increase. I put
in place something called rapid charge processing. We brought the
average time of processing an individual charge from 2 years to 2\1/2\
months and raised the remedy rate from 14 percent to 43 percent using
settlement techniques that are commonly used to resolve cases in the
court system.
Chairman Rogers said, show me a plan. And perhaps if we can tie the
President's request for an increase to a plan, that would mean that the
EEOC would have to show structural changes and not come back for annual
increases. Perhaps he would look more closely at this substantial
increase for the EEOC. I thank the chairman for looking closely at my
proposal.
When I came to the EEOC, it was known primarily for a backlog of
125,000 cases. We got rid of most of that backlog before I left the
agency in about 3 years' time.
I raise the case of EEOC not only because I am a former chair, but
because I believe not only in quality, I believe in equity and
efficiency. And I think those of us that are for equality had better
stand for efficiency or we are not going to get equality. The best way
to go about cases is to try and work them out. Then they deter
employers and then there is a win-win for everyone.
Mr. Speaker, I remind this body that I have been speaking here this
evening not for myself but for 50 women in this House, some of whom
will embrace some of what I have to say, all of whom who stand for
fairness and equality for women during Women's History Month.
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