PEP, March 2010: Women still earn less

By JANE LaTOUR

Women still earn less — more than they used to, but less than men. In 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, for every dollar paid to men, full-time working women made 77 cents.

Equal pay for equal work has been the law of the land since 1963, when women earned only 59 cents for every dollar men made. But with 80 percent of women still in traditional job categories — secretarial and clerical, retail, care-giving and primary education — full equality has been slow in coming. [See 'Woman at sea,' the story of one woman in a nontraditional job.]

In March, Women’s History Month, the voices of women members of District Council 37 add up to an economic snapshot of their struggles to stretch their paychecks.

Patricia Peterson, a 32-year Police Dept. veteran and a shop steward in Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549, has a list of survival strategies. “I check what’s on sale in different supermarkets and shop accordingly. I bring my lunch to work, and sometimes breakfast, too. The cost of everything has gone up so much.”

Local 372’s Ella Arauz, a Health Aide for 13 years, clips every useful discount coupon and has cut back on purchases. Arauz passes the coupons she doesn’t use along to others as she struggles to pay her bills. “Between the bills, rent and food, it’s very difficult,” she said.

“It’s not easy to survive in this economy,” said 22-year tow truck driver Betty Jones, a member of Local 983 and the mother of four. “Prices keep going up. To save money, I carpool and bring my lunch and I’ve cut back on a lot of things. You have to do that to make ends meet.”

Sobering statistics

Local 957’s Ruth Brantley says, “You struggle to pay the bills and pray to God that you can survive and pay the rent. The rent keeps going up! It’s supposed to be only about 30 percent of your salary, but it’s much more than that. So you have to do with less food. Everything is up except our paychecks. We have to fight to get those raises!” Brantley is a Secretary at the Housing Authority, where she has worked for 28 years.

Despite her deceptive name, Roger Stokes is another Local 1549 woman working for the Police Dept. “I try to make ends meet,” she said. “I live paycheck-to-paycheck. These are hard economic times and I am grateful to have a job. But it’s hard even if you have a job when your rent is $1,000 a month.”

The statistics on how women are faring in today’s economy are sobering. Despite all of the progress of the last four decades, men still earn more than women in every industry and occupation surveyed by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2007. The percentage of households headed by women that live in poverty rose from 28.5 in 2000 to 31.4 in 2008.

Women made up half of the workforce by mid-2009, but the United States has no national policy to address the lack of affordable child care. Conservatives have defeated every legislative attempt to enact family-friendly initiatives. National Equal Pay Day on April 20 will call attention to women’s economic status, the persistent wage gap and the problems it creates for women in their retirement years.

Women have come a long way. But to make equality a reality, there’s still a long way to go.