[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 56 (Tuesday, April 20, 2010)]
[House]
[Page H2648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             EQUAL PAY DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, among the many great benefits of the 
commonsense health reform package we passed last month is a guarantee 
that finally in America being a woman is no longer a preexisting 
condition. By bringing an end to discriminatory policies like gender 
rating and ensuring coverage for maternity, preventative, and wellness 
care, our legislation puts women's health on an equal footing at long 
last.
  It is time now to do the same for women's earnings. I cannot think of 
a better way to follow our historic success on health care last month 
than finally signing the Paycheck Fairness Act into law.
  In America today women now make up half of the workforce. Two-thirds 
of women are either the sole breadwinner or co-breadwinner in their 
family. Women are also more likely than men to graduate from college. 
They run more than 10 million businesses with combined annual sales of 
$1.1 trillion and are responsible for making 80 percent of the consumer 
buying decisions.
  Yet right now in the 21st century, women make only 78 cents on the 
dollar as compared to men. Women of color are even worse off. African 
American women make 68 cents on the dollar compared to the highest 
earners, while Hispanic women make only 57 cents. Unmarried women, 
those who are single, widowed, divorced, or separated, have an average 
annual household salary that is almost $12,000 lower than unmarried 
men, and they make a paltry 56 cents on the dollar when compared to 
married men.
  Over a lifetime these disparities take a huge toll on women. 
According to the National Committee for Pay Equity, women are losing 
out on between $400,000 and $2 million on average over the course of a 
lifetime. As a result, 70 percent of seniors living in poverty are 
women.
  This pay disparity is particularly galling when you consider the 
current crisis in our labor markets. It is true that more men have lost 
jobs than women in this recent recession, mainly because of the 
industries affected. But that only means that more and more women are 
forced to take on the full burden of keeping their families afloat, 
making the problem about smaller paychecks even more acute.
  The recession aside, this is not a new problem. In 1956 President 
Dwight Eisenhower told the Congress that ``legislation to apply the 
principle of equal pay for equal work without discrimination because of 
sex is a matter of simple justice.'' Seven years later under President 
Kennedy, the Congress passed the Equal Pay Act to end the ``serious and 
endemic problem'' of unequal wages. And 47 years later, all we know now 
is that the act is not working as intended in its current form. That is 
why we mark today Pay Equity Day, the day that a woman's 2009 earnings 
catches up with what men made last year. This is an occasion, quite 
frankly, I wish we no longer had to commemorate.
  The good news is that conditions are finally right to achieve real 
pay equity in America. We in the House of Representatives have now 
passed the Paycheck Fairness bill twice, legislation that will give 
real teeth to the Equal Pay Act at last. It simply says men and women 
in the same job, in the same job, should get the same amount of wages. 
You would think that that is a no brainer, but the fact of the matter 
is whether you are a waitress, bus driver, engineer, university 
professor, news anchor, women are being paid less for the same job as 
their male counterparts. Those of us who serve in the House of 
Representatives, men and women, different parts of the country, 
different education, different skills, we all get paid the same amount 
of money. That is not true for most women in this Nation.
  Now that we have passed this in the House, we wait only for the 
United States Senate to act. So we are on the cusp of achieving real 
economic security for American women. I urge my colleagues to impress 
upon the Senate the necessity of this legislation. We have a moral 
obligation to face this continuing pay equity head-on, and it is time 
to get it done.
  Our passage of health reform last month has shown that the American 
government can still accomplish great things, that we can still make 
this country a fairer, more compassionate, and a more humane place for 
people to live. Now let us finally ensure that America's women, now 
half of this Nation's workforce, are treated as fairly and as equitably 
as the other half. Let's give real teeth to the Equal Pay Act at last 
and make sure that women are respected and valued for the job that they 
do and paid the same amount of money in the same job that any man may 
have. What we need to do is to make this one of the last ``Equal Pay 
Days'' in our history.

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