Just what we need: an activist AG who recognizes the link between politics and justice. Email:
Massachusetts has an opportunity to address a core economic issue for women and families and we need your help. Will you join me to stand up for mothers, daughters and granddaughters across the state by calling your legislators right now and telling them you support equal pay for equal work? …
In 1945, Massachusetts passed the country’s first equal pay act and became the first state to require equal pay for equal work. That was 70 years ago and we still haven’t delivered on that promise. The facts are clear:
· Massachusetts women earn about 80 percent of what men earn for the same job, a pay gap that’s even wider among mothers and women of color.
· Nationwide, more than half of families depend on women’s earnings and, as of 2013, women were the lone or primary breadwinner in 40 percent of households with children.
We need to do better. That’s why I’m supporting legislation to do just that. I urged lawmakers to support pay equity legislation which would make some critical updates to the law by guaranteeing employees the right to discuss their wages openly with their employers, providing important legal protection to employers that do the right thing around wage disparities and creating a more workable standard for bringing an equal pay claim under the law, bringing Massachusetts in line with federal law.
Can I nominate Healey for Governor? She’d do a lot more for Massachusetts than Charlie Baker.
jconway says
She’s AG not a DA, otherwise I wholeheartedly agree with this post.
johntmay says
Making the 80% claim requires using equivalencies. I think this really needs to be explained in order for this to make sense with my understanding of capitalism. For example, if I am a capitalist and I know that I can hire a female to do the same work as a male at a 20% discount, why would I ever hire a male in the first place?
Secondly, if I am a male worker in a factory or retail store and I know that I am getting paid 20% more than my female coworker, I’m afraid that paying her more means paying me less, and I’m already scraping by.
Please know that I fully support the AG in this effort and I am not arguing against equal pay for all. I am simply trying to look at it from a different angle and looking for a better way to “sell it”.
SamTracy says
It’s my understanding that the fact that women make ~77% of what men do is an average of all women and all men’s salaries, not a comparison by job — meaning, the problem isn’t that women are being paid less for the same job, but that they’re not able to obtain those high-paying jobs (STEM fields, CEOs, etc) in the first place due to various obstacles put in their way.
Was AG Healey misquoting that statistic, or is there another source that says women in MA make 80% of what men do for the same job? If so I’d love to get a link to check the study out. Thanks!
hesterprynne says
From National Women’s Law Center – wage gap state-by-state.
ChiliPepr says
Nowhere on that page does it say it is comparing the same jobs for men vs woman… it is comparing the average of all women vs the average of all men.
SamTracy says
Though that does confirm that she was mis-using the statistic. The site says, “a woman working full time, year round is typically paid less than a full-time, year-round male worker” meaning that it’s talking about the entire workforce, not comparing people in the same job.
It’s unfortunate that the discussion around pay equity often mischaracterizes these statistics, since it’s leading us to the wrong solutions. We should be focusing on reducing barriers to women entering high-paying professions, not on making sure women and men in the same role are being paid fairly (since for the most part, they already are).
ChiliPepr says
I have not seen any study that says women are paid 80% of a man for the same job.
Christopher says
Do employees not now have the right to “openly” (whatever that means in this context) discuss their wages with their employers? If you have a concern about what your making, isn’t your employer EXACTLY the person you talk too by definition?
As for Healey for Gov., if she didn’t seek the nomination she would break the streak going back at least three of her immediate predecessors.
SomervilleTom says
I think what she’s referring to is employees who seek information about compensation for other employees (in a generic way). Things like salary ranges for a given job title, annual increase budgets per job classification, and so on.
While personally-identifiable information about specific compensation packages for specific people is appropriately kept private by some (not all) companies, it is still important that employees be able to get data from their employer to confirm that compensation policies are, in fact, gender-neutral as they should be.
In several of the companies I’ve worked for (including the companies I ran myself), we had an “open compensation” policy — every compensation package for every employee was available to every employee. In my own company, the executives determined (in consultation with our investors) a budget for each year’s annual increase. The team then discussed and came to a consensus about how that overall budgeted increase was most fairly allocated. My executive team found that our employees knew better than we did which of their peers most deserved a raise and which did not. We found that the resulting increase in trust greatly improved how the employees felt about the company and greatly improved the overall effectiveness of the team.
In companies that hide that information, employees frequently end up speculating (usually incorrectly) about other employees — especially about minority and female employees (in hi-tech, technical contributors are still mostly male, sadly). The resulting misinformation, rumor, and outright slander are often toxic to the team.