Bakery charges women 79 cents on a dollar for Equal Pay Day

“Women have been fighting for equal rights for 227 years”, Arquette said, “and at this point now we’ve reached a breaking point because women are contributing to 40 percent of our American families“.

“In New Mexico, women are losing more than $2.3 billion per year due to the wage gap”, she said.

However, according to USA Today, wider pay gaps have been observed for different racial and ethnic groups.

Activists have said that statistics show that women are paid substantially less than men some the similar kind of work.

Both of these reports follow a recent trend of pay disclosures from Silicon Valley firms eager to show progress on the tech and inequality problem. Glassdoor’s data indicates that 67 percent of US employees will not apply for a job if they believe a wage gap exists. Created by the National Committee on Pay Equity, Equal Pay Day was launched in 1996 to bring awareness to the gender wage gap – an issue that has taken center stage over the last couple of years, particularly with 2016’s presidential race.

Kevin Miller, senior researcher with the American Association of University Women, noted that women’s earnings are more affected than those of men because they are more willing to take out time from work.

In Florida, the current average for female earners is 85 cents to every dollar a man makes. Arjuna Capital had filed shareholder proposals at each of the companies, asking these to close the gender wage gap and release salary information, Wall Street Journal reported. “It’s the idea that whether you are a high school teacher, a business executive, or a professional soccer player or tennis player, your work should be equally valued or rewarded, whether you are a man or a woman”.

In her blog post, Hogan writes that women who work at Microsoft in the USA make 99.8 cents for every $1 a man makes, when comparing men and women who hold the same job title and are at the same level. The act, introduced two years ago in the Senate, would bolster the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by adding enforcement mechanisms to stop pay discrimination and punish employers who retaliate against employees who claim wage bias.