Steny Hoyer: “Yet even today, Mr. Speaker, we must face up to this reality: American women earned only 72 cents for every dollar that…”

“Yet even today, Mr. Speaker, we must face up to this reality: American women earned only 72 cents for every dollar that men earned in 1999 for equal and comparable work, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that, Mr. Speaker, is a drop of 1 cent from 1998. Put another way, that 72-cent figure means that today, Tuesday, April 3, is the day on which women's wages catch up to men's wages from the previous week. It takes women 7 working days to earn what men earn in 5. This gender wage gap exists even when men and women have the same occupation, race, and experience; are employed in the same industry, in the same region, and are working for firms of equal size. But here, Mr. Speaker, is what it means in real terms. Each week it means that women, on average, have $28 less to spend on groceries, housing, child care, and other expenses for every $100 of work they do. Each month it means that women, on average, work 1 week for free.”