Paycheck Fairness Act

PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT -- (House of Representatives - July 31, 2008)

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Mrs. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Chairman, we talk about family values. And the most important way that we can show that we value families is to ensure that a woman earns a fair day's pay.

Most women work outside the home, including over 70 percent of all mothers. Yet among full-time workers, women earn only 77 percent compared to men. Unequal pay practices hurt not only women but their entire families. The typical wife brings home about one-third of her family's income.

The Paycheck Fairness Act will help prevent, regulate, and reduce discrimination against women. It will prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their coworkers, as we saw in the Lilly Ledbetter case.

Women's work should be valued equally. This bill is an important step towards gender equality. And I thank my colleagues, Rosa, George, and many others, for their hard work on it.

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Most women are in the labor force, including over 70 percent of all mothers. Yet, women continue to earn less than men even if they have similar educational levels and work in similar kinds of jobs.

A 2003 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study that I commissioned showed that when occupation, marital status, job tenure, industry, and race are accounted for, women still earn 80 cents for every dollar men earn.

Research has found that women's choices cannot explain about 40 percent of the wage gap between men and women.

Pay discrimination hurts not only a working woman, but her entire family--especially in the face of rising prices for basics, like food and gasoline.

The typical wife brings home about a third of her family's total income. Over the past three decades, only those families who have a working wife have seen real increases in family income: Families without a working wife have real incomes today that are nearly identical to what they were over 35 years ago.

Congress passed the Equal Pay Act nearly half a century ago, yet women still experience pay discrimination.

According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, working women stand to lose $250,000 over the course of their career because of unequal pay practices.

The Paycheck Fairness Act will prevent, regulate and reduce pay discrimination for working women nationwide. It will help women become better negotiators, enforce equal pay laws for federal contractors, and require the Department of Labor to work with employers to eliminate pay disparities.

As we saw in the Lilly Ledbetter case, if a woman doesn't know how much her male colleagues earn, she cannot know that she is being discriminated against.

The Paycheck Fairness Act will prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their co-workers.

Women need to know the true value of the jobs that they do and this is an important step towards gender parity.

I strongly urge you to vote yes on this bill.

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