On the recordMay 31, 2012
I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would help end the pay disparity between men and women in the workplace. You heard that women earn 77 percent of what men earn; that's the average. But for African American women, it's 62 percent, and Latinas, it's only 53 percent. In Illinois, as a group, full-time working women lose approximately $21 billion a year due to the wage gap. If the Illinois wage gap, which amounts to nearly $12,000 a year, were eliminated, a working woman in Illinois would have enough money for approximately 108 more weeks of food, 7 more months of mortgage and utility payments, 14 more months of rent, 36 more months of family health insurance premiums, and over 3,000 additional gallons of gasoline. American families and our economy are paying the price of this wage discrimination, and it is time to end it. I urge all my colleagues who support fairness, who support women, to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.
