April 14 is pretty awesome because it’s my birthday. However, there is another event attempting to supersede my big day — Equal Pay Day.
To be honest, it’s kind of a downer. The day symbolizes how much longer women must work into the next year in order to earn the same amount as men earned in the previous year; on average, women earn less than men, so they must work longer for the same amount of pay. There’s debate about exactly how much less women are earning because the percentage differs based on what factors are included in the calculation. Regardless, there is a substantial pay gap, and the gap is greater for minority women than for white women.
Looking specifically at university graduates, the American Association of University Women found that, after accounting for factors including major and occupation, there’s still an unexplained seven percent gap one year after graduation. So, women around our age caught up to their same-aged male counterparts by roughly the last week in January of this year. However, the wage gap grew to 12 percent after 10 years.
We all know that women are awesome, so why hasn’t the wage gap disappeared? While there are more women nowadays in upper-level jobs that have traditionally been dominated by men, women overall still hold more lower-paying jobs than men do. Additionally, according to a Pew Research Center poll, women were "more likely to say they took career interruptions to care for family," a decision that has an enormous impact on long-term earnings.
Commonly proposed solutions to shrink the wage gap include instituting family friendly workplace policies, increasing the minimum wage and ending salary secrecy.
So, when you enter the workforce, search for a company that is willing to enact these resolutions. In the future, I want my birthday all to myself.
Erin Steiner is a fourth-year political science and women's & gender studies student.