Equal Pay For Women: The Gender Gap - YouTube

Channel: KPBS Public Media

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>> >>PEGGY: The federal equal pay act was passed in 1963, when a woman made 59 cents
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to every dollar a man made for the same work today women earn 77 cents for each dollar
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earned by men, my guest president elect of the lawyer's club of San Diego is here with
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details on why there's a wage gap, the long term losses and what a woman can do to get
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salary equality.
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Thank you so much for being here.
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Tomorrow's national equal pay day, what does that actually mean?
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>> >>: Equal pay day is the day in 2013 that women have to work to earn what their mail
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counter parts earned in 2012.
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It takes us 99 days into this year to earn what men earned last year.
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>> >>PEGGY: For the whole year.
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One of the missions of the lawyer's club which is a thousand?member local bar association
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is the advancement for women's status and law, in society.
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What types of occupations are we talking about where women are getting paid less than men?
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Is it across the board, lawyers, is it the people working in restaurants?
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>> >>: Peggy, it's women all across the wage spectrum and education spectrum, women are
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earning less no matter their education, no matter their profession.
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>> >>PEGGY: This has to have long?term consequences.
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The wage project, I know estimates on average a woman earns about 10,000?dollars less per
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year than a man for the same work.
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They also found that compared to men over a woman's lifetime career I believe 18 to
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64, high school graduates earn 700,000?dollars less, female college graduates earn about
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a million dollars less than their mail counter parts and a accumulatively professional graduates
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earn about two million dollars less than men with the same degree doing the same work.
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What is the long?term implications of this sort of discrepancy?
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>> >>: In the short?term, it means that women can't afford groceries, and rent, and health
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care, and basic life necessities the same as men.
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In the long?term, it means that women can't adequately save for retirement.
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We know women out live men on average, and one of the most vulnerable populations in
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San Diego is elderly women.
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More live in poverty.
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We know this is a long?term problem for women self?efficiency and economic security.
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>> >>PEGGY: It trickles on years and years.
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It's been five decades since the equal pay act passed.
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I'm alarmed every time I see the data that in 2013, women still earned 23 cents less
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per dollar than a man does during the same job.
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Why?
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>> >>: That's right, that figure is alarming.
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Seventy?seven septs rr on the dollar we earn.
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There's direct discrimination, and indirect discrimination.
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Direct discrimination is controlling for all other factors, education, knowledge, skill,
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experience, women that 40% of the gap in pay is to attributable to direct discrimination.
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Implicit bias, we also have association bias, people hire and promote people that look like
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them.
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S the rr lots of indirect discrimination that attributes to women getting paid less.
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>> >>PEGGY: What about the idea women aren't negotiating to say I want more money?
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>> >>: That is part of it, but it's not as I said the whole picture.
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One of the things that we can do is arm ourselves with information, right, peggy?
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Information is power.
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And so negotiating is really important.
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>> >>PEGGY: How can a woman legally found out how much she's making compared to her
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male counter part?
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>> >>: There are resources women can can research salary information.
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Salary .com, pay scale .com, university career office and ask for comparable information.
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Right now, we don't actually have federal legislation that protects workers and allows
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them to ask them employer for salary information.
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That is what the泄??
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pay check fairness act is all about.
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>> >>PEGGY: Where does it stand right now?
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>> >>: The pay check fairness act died last year in the senate, it passed the house.
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It's been reintroduced in congress this year, has 43 co?sponsored in the senate.
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>> >>PEGGY: What are some practical ways women can start to increase their salary?
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>> >>: They can educate themselves about salary, take a negotiation work shop and go in and
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work negotiate, organizations can publicize the data about the pay gap.
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I think your viewers will probably be alarmed.
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We need to know more about this so we can fix this.
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>> >>PEGGY: We have a lot more information on our website at KPBS.org, and we have links
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for this equal pay and what can be done about it.
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Joanna, thank you so much for talking with us.