Shortchanged: Why Women Get Paid Less Than Men
Peter Coy and Elizabeth Dwoskin
BusinessWeek
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So how did this problem really get fired up? Lilly Ledbetter was working at a tire plant when she realized that although she was in a management position, she was not being paid equal to what men in management positions were being paid. This sparked something in her to get to the bottom of it.
She took it to court and a jury found it "more likely than not" that she was suffering from pay discrimination. She appealed to the Supreme Court but they turned her down because the complaint was not within 180 days of when she was initially underpaid. President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Resoration Act which states that each new undersized paycheck should be treated as a punishable offense.
While this certainly helps things, women still do not know if they're being underpaid to begin with unless they are told by their employers, or see their fellow male coworkers' paychecks and compare. The Paycheck Fairness Act would fix this deficiency. This act was passed in the House in 2009 and would allow employees to inquire about any pay gaps or discrimination. It would require employers to send in salary data that would make violations much easier to detect.
"The Senate GOP’s June 5 filibuster of the bill played into the hands of Democrats seeking women’s votes, as did defensive quotes from Republican senators. Marco Rubio of Florida said he didn’t think the bill would accomplish its purpose, and “reads more to me like some sort of welfare plan for trial lawyers.”
Currently, though it is very easy for employers to slip by while paying their employees unfairly. A lack of good data makes progess in this area close to impossible. And when individual cases are brought to attention, employers usually can find a way to finagle their way around them because they are too "idiosyncratic". Providing this data would also be asking a lot of paperwork from companies that are unwilling to expose themselves in such a way.
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