U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity CommissionCites Persistent Gender-Based Wage Discrimination, Highlights Obama Administration Equal Pay Task Force
STATEMENT OFSTUART J. ISHIMARU, ACTING CHAIRMAN
U.S. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION
BEFORE THECOMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
MARCH 11, 2010
Mr. Chairman, and distinguished members of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you at this important hearing, “A Fair Share for All: Pay Equity in the New American Workplace.”
The Problem of Gender Inequality in Employment Compensation
In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to address pay inequities based on sex. At that time, Congress denounced sex-based wage discrimination as contributing to depressed wages, underutilization of the labor force, obstruction of commerce, and unfair competition. While the passage of the Equal Pay Act and subsequent year’s passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have done much to equalize pay for men and women in this country, in 2010 the pay gap continues to perpetuate the very same problems the Equal Pay Act and Title VII were intended to combat. Much work remains to close the gap, to end gender pay inequity, and to deliver on the promise of equal pay for equal work.
In 2009, Maria Shriver, working with the Center for American Progress, released a ground breaking report entitled, “A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything.” This sweeping study of the role of women in our nation’s economies and the economies of our families today provided a wealth of insights into the challenges women still face when it comes to earning equal pay for equal work. This report and other recent studies confirm what we at the EEOC have recognized for some time:
The gender wage gap persists. The wage gap is alive and well in America, with the typical full-time, year round female worker making $.77 for every dollar earned by her male counterpart.
1 The gap is even wider for women of color and people with disabilities, and undocumented immigrant workers often don’t even manage to earn minimum wage. Although some of the pay gap can be explained by differentials in experience or as a result of the differences in the occupations men and women typically do, the Shriver Report estimates that about 41% of the pay gap cannot be explained by these factors.
2Caregiver discrimination results in gender pay discrepancies. Women continue to be more likely to bear significant responsibility for providing care to children, elderly family members, and family members with illnesses or disabilities.
3 Discrimination against caregivers in the workplace based on gender stereotypes and presumptions about the competence and commitment of working mothers and others with significant caregiving responsibilities continues to drag down wages for women.
4 This is an issue I have taken a particular interest in at the EEOC, and I am proud to have been a part of the bipartisan effort to address this kind of discrimination through the Caregiver Guidance
5 the Commission issued in 2007, and the Best Practices Guide
6 we issued in 2009.
Part time work leads to lower benefits and pay over both the short term and long term. Women are more than twice as likely as men to work part-time, and they often make the choice to work part time in order to provide care for their children or other family members. According to the Department of Labor Women’s Bureau, 24.6% of employed women worked part time in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, as compared to only 11.1% of men.
7 Part time work is less likely to come with benefits such as health insurance or paid time off, and by its very nature, tends to pay less than full time work. Because so much of the way our earnings increase over time is based on raises calculated as a percentage of current salary, the fact that women are more likely to work part time causes the pay gap to accumulate and widen over time.
Gender-based wage discrimination is especially untenable now, as more families come to rely on the income brought in by women workers to make ends meet. Recent studies show that the current economic downturn is resulting in more women serving as the primary breadwinners for their families.
8 This is because men are losing jobs at a much higher rate than women.
9 You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out that where women make 77 cents on the dollar versus their male counterparts, where a father’s wages are lost, an average family can lose over 50% of its income. If there ever was a time to act to remedy the gender pay gap, it is now.
EEOC’s Role in Enforcing Equal Pay Laws
The EEOC’s role in enforcing the nation’s equal pay laws is a central one. EEOC is the primary enforcement agency for both the Equal Pay Act and Title VII’s prohibitions on compensation discrimination. We have further jurisdiction to address pay discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. The EEOC has issued a Compliance Manual Chapter of Compensation Discrimination which provides detailed guidance and instructions for investigating and analyzing claims of compensation discrimination under each of the statutes enforced by the EEOC.
On January 29, 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 which supersedes the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Inc. Ledbetter had required a compensation discrimination charge to be filed within 180 days of a discriminatory pay-setting decision (or 300 days in jurisdictions that have a local or state law prohibiting the same form of compensation discrimination), an unrealistic expectation given the secrecy that usually surrounds pay decisions.
The Ledbetter Act restores the pre-Ledbetter position of the EEOC that each paycheck that delivers discriminatory compensation is a wrong actionable under the federal EEO statutes, regardless of when the discrimination began. As noted in the Act, it recognizes the ‘reality of wage discrimination” and restores “bedrock principles of American law.”
