Equal Pay Day Celebration to coincide with the city's “Arts Night Out," on April 11.
NORTHAMPTON -- Leigh Edwards, a student at Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, and an intern with the area nonprofit MotherWoman, is organizing an Equal Pay Day Celebration to coincide with the city's “Arts Night Out," on April 11.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the “Equal Pay Act” to promote equal pay for workers, male and female. Since then, the gender wage gap has improved, but has yet to be eradicated entirely. This year's Equal Pay Day falls on April 8.
According to a MotherWoman release, area students will be present at the "Arts Night Out" event to talk about inequalities women still face. Students will be dressed in Americana attire, will hand out balloons, and distribute flyers that highlight income disparities and their consequences. The flyer will contain a link to an online survey regarding policy issues, and those who participate in the survey will be entered into a raffle.
MotherWoman, which works to support mothers and their families, through advocating for public policy, is sponsoring the Equal Pay Day event, while working alongside students in the valley to raise awareness about pay disparity.
Women’s median full-time earnings are 77 percent of a man’s median full-time earnings; black women’s earnings are 64 percent; and Latinas earnings are 54 percent, according to statistics in the release.
On average, women will lose $434,000 during their lifetime due to the wage-gap. This wage-loss could feed a family of four for 37 years, purchase 14 new cars, or could buy two homes, according to the release.
Poverty is known to have detrimental effects on children, as they are more likely to experience malnutrition, will be exposed to a lower-quality education, and are more likely than a child who doesn’t grow up in poverty, to experience poverty themselves. The lack of affordable daycare/assistance, no mandatory maternity leave/paid maternity leave, and no option for paternity leave, often leave women fending for themselves, and their children, the release notes.
"If policies were in place that allowed women more options and flexibility for their families, such as affordable or universal childcare, paid maternity/paternity leave, the wage gap would decrease," organizer Edwards said in the release.
According to the Center for American Progress, she noted in the release, increasing the minimum wage to just $10.10 per hour would affect 58.6 percent of Massachusetts’s women. That figure accounts for almost 301,000 women in Massachusetts, many of whom are single mothers supporting their families.
“Perhaps we will see the day when womanhood and motherhood will no longer hinder a woman’s financial progress. This is why MotherWoman is in full support of social policies like the Living Wage and Earned Paid Sick Time legislation in Massachusetts, as well as paid maternity and paternity leave,” Shannon Koehn, MotherWoman’s executive director, said in the release.
Both the Living Wage and Earned Paid Sick Time legislation will be on the ballot for Massachussetts’ voters to weigh in on in November 2014.
For more information on MotherWoman, visit http://www.motherwoman.org