Wear the Button: It's Equal Pay Day

I was young, maybe 5 or 6. My grandma had a button pinned on her coat (yes, buttons were a thing then) – the button was red, white, and blue and said ERA.

“What’s ERA?” young me asked. My grandma educated me, at a level I understood, that the Equal Rights Amendment was about having equal rights for women and girls.

I turn 50 this year. And still, so many of the things my grandma was fighting for haven’t been fully corrected.

Take pay, for example. Yes – progress has been made since the 1970’s – but we’re still not paying men and women equally.

Equal Pay Day: Let's Visualize the Difference

One way we can envision pay differences based on gender is the observance of Equal Pay Day.

• Originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity in 1996, Equal Pay Day symbolizes the ongoing issue of pay disparity and the wage gap between men and women.
• The actual observed date shifts each year.
• Equal Pay Day marks the point when the average woman’s current earnings, combined with what she earned in the previous year, equals what the average man was paid last year.

The Center for American Progress recently issued a fact sheet titled The State of Women in the Labor Workforce. 

• While women's participation in the workforce has returned to pre-pandemic levels, the Center found that pay for women continues to lag behind that of their male counterparts.
• The pay differential remains even greater for women of color.

Clearly there’s still room for us to improve and make progress towards equality. And hopefully by the time I have a granddaughter, the pay gap that exists today will eliminated. Not only because equality matters, but also because I’m not a fan of wearing buttons.