President Obama just issued a proclamation declaring today National Equal Pay Day, calling upon all Americans to “recognize the full value of women’s skills and their significant contributions to the labor force, acknowledge the injustice of wage discrimination, and join efforts to achieve equal pay.”
Obama touted his signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act upon coming into office and his 2010 creation of the National Equal Pay Task Force.
“For millions of families across our country, women’s wages mean food on the table, decent medical care, and timely mortgage payments,” the president wrote. “Yet, in 2010 — 47 years after President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 — women who worked full-time earned only 77 percent of what their male counterparts did. The pay gap was even greater for African American and Latina women, with African American women earning 64 cents and Latina women earning 56 cents for every dollar earned by a Caucasian man.”
“National Equal Pay Day represents the date in the current year through which women must work to match what men earned in the previous year, reminding us that we must keep striving for an America where everyone gets an equal day’s pay for an equal day’s work.”
“Women are breadwinners in a growing number of families, and women’s earnings play an increasingly important role in families’ incomes,” Obama added. “…On National Equal Pay Day, let us resolve to become a Nation that values the contributions of our daughters as much as those of our sons, denies them no opportunity, and sets no limits on their dreams.”
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