[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4681-4682]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               EQUAL PAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. CARSON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Equal 
Pay Day. The Equal Pay Act became public law in 1963, making it illegal 
to pay women lower rates for the same job strictly on the basis of sex. 
Yet, almost four decades later, the wage gap among women and men 
persists.
  It is appalling that in the year 2002, women across the United States 
continue to be discriminated against on the basis of gender. Women 
holding similar jobs with similar education, skills, work experience, 
job content, still earn less than men. The Census Bureau reports that 
women earn 27 cents less than men on the dollar.
  Why would I bring this up, other than it being Equal Pay Day, Mr. 
Speaker? There has been a lot of commentary here on the floor of the 
House about welfare and welfare reform, and truly, women want not to 
draw welfare, but rather to get into the marketplace and be 
economically self-sufficient.
  Yet, we find just in Indiana, in a glance at Indiana, that the 
African American women earn only 67 percent of what men earn, and the 
earnings among Latino women fall even lower, earning 58 percent of what 
men earn. Three-quarters of African American women and Latinos work in 
just three types of employment: sales, clerical, and service and 
factory jobs, and a majority of those women do not even make enough 
money to reach the poverty line for a family of four, which is $18,000 
in the year 2002.
  In Indiana, women, older women, women who are Social Security age, 
are living in poverty because their income, their lifetime income 
earnings, have decided the amount of their Social Security checks. So 
the consequence of that is that women are drawing a very minuscule 
amount of Social Security checks, which propels them into a remaining 
lifetime of poverty.
  Thirty-nine years ago, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act. He 
called it the first step in addressing the unconscionable practice of 
paying female employees less wages than male employees for the same 
job. At that time, women earned 58 cents for each dollar earned by a 
man. So Mr. Speaker, equal pay is not only a woman's issue, it is a 
family issue. It is beneficial for the entire family.
  Women often provide a significant amount or all of their family's 
income,

[[Page 4682]]

and in many cases, they are the sole wage-earners, struggling to 
provide their families with the best quality of life they possibly can. 
It is a shame that they and their families continue to be victims of 
this unjust discrimination.
  I thought it was imperative that we call this to the attention of the 
House of Representatives and to the United States, as well, to suggest 
that we have, indeed, come a long way since Niagara Falls, but we have 
a long way to go.

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