The White House is celebrating Equal Pay Day by taking new steps ending the gender pay gap for federal workers and contractors.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday urging the government to consider banning federal contractors from seeking information on job seekers’ previous pay histories. And a new Department of Labor directive aims to strengthen the obligations of federal contractors to audit payrolls to help protect themselves from pay disparities by gender, race, or ethnicity.
The Office of Personnel Management is also considering a regulation to address the use of prior pay history in hiring and establishing compensation for federal workers.
Equal Pay Day is designed to draw attention to how much longer women have to work to earn what men earned the year before.
The data show that while the pay gap is the smallest ever, the coronavirus pandemic has altered women’s participation in the workforce so that “what we’re seeing is an artificial reduction,” Jasmine said. Tucker, director of research at the National Women’s Law Center.
For example, women who remained in the workforce during the pandemic and worked full-time often had higher incomes than their counterparts who lost low-paying jobs, indicating that the 2020 figures cannot be compared. with previous year’s wage gap data, Tucker said.
Among other issues, the Biden administration wants to combat occupational segregation to ensure that women have better access to well-paid jobs, which are usually dominated by men, according to a senior administration official who advanced on Monday. administration efforts, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Last October, the administration published a national gender strategy to advance the full participation of women and girls in society.
This year, the administration is looking for new ways to combat wage disparities and draw attention to outstanding efforts to combat the wage gap, such as the U.S. women’s soccer team. February settlement of $ 24 million with U.S. football in a discrimination dispute.
The settlement includes a commitment to equalize the salary and bonuses to match the men’s team.
“I think we’re going to look back right now and just think, ‘Wow, what an incredible turning point in the history of U.S. football that changed the game and changed the world, really, forever,'” the star midfielder said. Megan Rapinoe said at that moment.
Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other government officials planned to commemorate Equal Pay Day with a Tuesday afternoon event attended by members of the women’s soccer team.
Tucker said there is a long way to go to achieve equal pay, especially after the pandemic.
There were more than 1.1 million fewer women in the labor force in February 2022 than in February 2020, meaning they do not work or look for work.
“There was a particular spill among low-wage workers, and what was left were middle- and high-wage workers who were isolated from the pandemic,” Tucker said.
In 2020, the average woman who worked full-time all year earned 83 cents per dollar compared to her male partner who did the same job, according to the White House. The gap is even bigger for black and Native American and Latino women.
The problem affects women even later in life. A 2020 Brookings Institution study on women’s retirement found that Social Security benefits for women are, on average, 80% higher than those for men.
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