Working moms are paid 58 cents to the dollar men make and just caught up for 2021’s gap
Congratulations, working moms: As of Sept. 8, your paycheck has finally caught up to what men made last year. It’s Equal Pay Day for mothers, because working moms are paid 58 cents for every dollar paid to dads.
Equal pay is also a racial issue: For every dollar paid to men, white women earn 80 cents, Asian American women earn 75 cents, Black women earn 60 cents; and Latina women earn just 43 cents.
The pandemic has widened the wage gap into a chasm paved over by silence and the status quo. It’s no small wonder that teaching and nursing — two professions that have long been associated with women — are two of the professions hit hardest during the pandemic.
When we take advantage of women and mothers, we perpetuate inequality for fully half the population.
Despite working mothers bringing home nearly 40% of their household income on average, the pay gap that women and mothers experience over the course of their careers has vast consequences.
The typical woman loses hundreds of thousands of dollars over her lifetime due to the wage gap, and it’s an even more devastating disparity for women of color, according to The California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. Even women who don’t have children can suffer from the “pregnancy penalty” on their paychecks, purely because their lifetime of work is seen as less reliable than that of men.
“This wage gap makes it harder for moms to put food on the table, gas in their cars, and to afford quality child-care and healthcare,” said Holly Martinez, Executive Director of the CCSWG.
Working mothers not only shoulder more of the wage gap burden, but also fall behind in their careers while doing more unpaid work in the home. According to a survey by the Center for American Progress, working mothers were 40 percent more likely than fathers to report making job decisions “based on child care considerations rather than in the interest of their financial situation or career goals.”
Roughly a quarter of working moms say they have turned down a promotion because they were balancing work and parenting responsibilities, according to the Pew Research Center. And while mothers struggle, American businesses lose approximately $12.7 billion annually because of their employees’ child care challenges.
Before the pandemic, 40 percent of women said they do all or most of the childcare and housework for their families, while just 12 percent of men said the same. Since the pandemic, 80% of mothers have taken on more household work, according to new research by LeanIn.Org and SurveyMonkey.
California, where we have some of the strongest equal pay laws in the nation, should be a natural leader.
“Mom’s Equal Pay Day is a reminder that while California has the strongest pay laws in the nation, we still have so much work to do,” said First Partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. “To achieve true gender equality, we must have more women represented in leadership positions, family friendly policies that allow women to thrive in the workplace and at home, and equal pay.”
#EqualPayCA is a campaign led by Siebel Newsom in partnership with the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, focused on closing the pay gap in California. The campaign challenges California businesses to commit to pay equity in the workplace through the Pay Equity Pledge. Already, California-based businesses such as Apple, AirBnB, eBay, Mattel, SMUD, the State of California, Chipotle and the Brilliant Earth Group have signed.
Moms needed an extra 251 days into 2022 just to equal what the men made because we still see women and their work as less important. But moms, like any other overused and underappreciated commodity, are starting to burn out, and we are seeing the effects of that right now.
Equal Pay Day should be Dec. 31 for everyone, because we should all make the same amount of money in the same jobs, regardless of who we are. That future begins with companies understanding and enforcing pay equity for women, regardless of their race, gender or parental status.
This story was originally published September 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
