On the recordSeptember 10, 2014
I rise today to support the Paycheck Fairness Act. Equal pay for equal work is the law of the land. It has been for over 50 years. Yet the law is one thing and the reality is quite another. Women still get paid far less than men for the same work. Last year Hawaii News Now, a TV station in Hawaii, shared the story of a woman in Honolulu. She had been asking for a raise for over a year, to no avail. Her employers acknowledged that she was underpaid, but they didn't do anything about it. Then she found out a new male hire with less experience would be paid $5,000 more to do the same job. She is not alone. In Hawaii a woman makes, on average, 83 cents for every dollar a man makes. While that is better than the national average, it is still not equal pay for equal work. Research shows that the gender gap in pay begins with a woman's first job and widens from there. So when a young woman graduates and takes her place in the workplace, her starting line is already behind that of her male colleagues. That makes it harder for her to catch up, no matter how hard she works. The women I know work incredibly hard. Many of them are heads of households and sole breadwinners, which makes the pay inequality that much tougher for them. The gender pay gap persists even for workers with the same level of experience and education. The gap is even wider for older women. Congress passed the Equal Pay Act over 50 years ago. As I said earlier, this is the law of the land.…
