Women in Arizona are paid 82 cents for every dollar men make—an average deficit of $7,647 a year for each woman working full-time.
That’s appalling.
In 2012, there is absolutely no sensible explanation for why the wage gap exists. This is a basic issue of fairness, and fixing it should be common sense. Yet, Congress couldn’t come together earlier this month to find a solution.
Republicans wouldn’t support a common-sense solution for something a vast majority of the country thinks is a problem, because it was a Democratic bill. Meanwhile, Democrats didn’t seek common ground with Republicans, because they wanted to use it to attack Republicans.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
It’s reprehensible that we have to legislate equal pay and opportunity for women—that should be a given. But since the wage gap indisputably exists, this is something we need to solve.
The partisanship in Washington, D.C., is hurting all of us. Common-sense solutions are neither common nor make sense in the toxic environment that rules policymaking. And what bothers me the most about that—more than the ugliness, divisiveness and embarrassing behavior—is we all pay the consequence.
U.S. Census Bureau data shows the wage gap persists across industry, education level and experience. And because that gap is so pervasive, there are huge ripple effects throughout our economy.
There are 429,000 families in Arizona with children 18 or younger that wholly or partially depend on the mother’s earnings. And as a whole, Arizona women lose more than $6 billion every year because of the wage gap. That has far-reaching and scary economic consequences for each Arizona household, vastly reducing the financial security and spending power of each home.
If the wage gap were eliminated, each of those families would have additional money to pay for, on average: five months of mortgage and utilities payments, 22 months of health-insurance premiums, 2,000 gallons of gas, or 58 weeks of food. After looking at those numbers, there is not a credible argument for allowing the wage gap to continue. It’s shameful that we have allowed this to go on, and that Washington is too polarized to do anything about it.
I was raised by two strong women, my mom and grandmother, who worked hard and did all they could to provide for me and my siblings—even though they confronted the same economic challenges that so many women-led households face.
It doesn’t make any sense that women are getting almost 20 percent less pay for the same work, especially mothers trying to take care of their kids.
Passing the Paycheck Fairness Act is simply something we need to do. It’s long overdue and widely supported. This should be an easy call. But first, we need both sides to start acting more responsibly.
We have to get out of the mindset where policy is viewed only through political lenses, and neither side is willing to move to get things done for the people. If we can get there, the Paycheck Fairness Act is at the top of the list of obvious solutions that have evaded the chronic politicians in Washington.
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2012.
I’m sure Jeff Flake and Wil Cardon would not support paycheck awareness. Just another reason for a non-Democrat like myself to vote for Rich Carmona for Senator.
100 years ago my father’s aunt was fighting for this issue. 50 years ago I was walking picket lines and helping with lawsuits over this issue. Every man out there had a mother who was discriminated against for no more reason than that she was a female. Go for it Carmona and Obama and Barber and Grijalva and any other man not afraid of equal status for women.
Many of the current politicians seem to want to take women back to the 1950’s where they were told their place was to be in the home, barefoot, pregnant, and with very few rights.
Now you want to give them equal pay for equal work?
Equal pay is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s time for the women to take control of our government. They sure as heck couldn’t do any worse.
Dr. Richard Carmona echos a popular theme. “we need both sides to start acting more responsibly.” The polarization in government has become cliche.
I for one am disappointed that the good Dr. doesn’t drill down a little bit further into the cause of this disparity. Does he think he can resist the forces that have stolen the souls of almost all the other politicians? Those forces would be the money that drives the elections and buys policy. Does he think he can achieve and retain an office without spending the bulk of his time fundraising? And cowing down to special interests, which are of course, mostly corporate interests? Fully 79% of all voters and even 68% of Republicans (Hart Research Assoc 2011) favor a Constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling of the Supreme Court that gave corporations the rights of a human being. It literally turned government “By the People” on its head and instituted government “by the corporations.”
How is this related to dysfunction in Congress? Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” In the words of President James Madison, “The day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. When that day comes, we must rely on the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation.” Abraham Lincoln said it like this. “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era or corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.” In a letter to William Elkin less than five months before he was assassinated.
While most, if not all, agree with the concept of equal pay, why is it that most if not all speaking out for equal pay assume the lower wage would be raised? Why not decrease the higher wage to that of the lower? A funny idea, yes, but just as reasonable as jumping to the conclusion that rates would be raised: so far the argument raised seems about fairness, equality, rights, but not necessarily about more money. But each of us want more, right? Perhaps achieving equal pay by decreasing the higher wage would garner support from all (three) sides of the aisle.
But the State’s (and Federal) loss of income taxes may be the reason we don’t assume decreasing the higher-paid amount to equal the lower-paid amount; we’d have less pooled money to pay for stuff. If the issue is one of income taxes, perhaps a middle ground is more reasonable:
Using Dr. Carmona’s $.18 pay discrepancy scenario above (i.e. Arizona men get paid $1 and Arizona women get paid $.82), just for fun why not raise Arizona women’s pay by 82%-of-that-$.18, since that’s the current percentage of the men’s rate that women make, and decrease Arizona men’s pay by the remaining 18%-of-that-$.18?
Per dollar, Arizona women get a $.15 raise in pay, Arizona men get a $.03 decrease in pay. The Great State of Arizona loses no amount of income taxes.
The percentage split of 18 and 82 seems better than going 50-50, doesn’t it? If we go 50-50, then women only get a $.09 raise and men get hit with a $.09 decrease. By comparison to the 18 and 82 percentage split, going 50-50 seems to hurt both sexes.
Reasonable? (Yes.) Fair? (Sure.) Equal? (huh?) Absurd? (Indeed!)