What is the Wage Gap?

"No worker should ever have to work for less than their job is worth. AFSCME has always done whatever it takes to win pay equity.We've taken our fight to the bargaining table, to the legislatures and to the courts — and we won't stop until the job is done."

Gerald W. McEntee
AFSCME International President

"Today, parents are both working to provide for themselves and their children. No family can make ends meet with paychecks made smaller by sex and race discrimination. It’s simple justice, and AFSCME will fight until every woman and every man is paid a fair wage for a fair day’s work."

William Lucy,
AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer

Despite passage of the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in the early 1960s, women workers still earn, on average, less than three-fourths of what men earn. And the wages for jobs held by women of color reflect both sex and race discrimination. African-American women earn about two-thirds of men’s wages, and Hispanic women earn less than 60 percent. Part of this wage gap is due to the systematic underpayment of jobs that are filled primarily by women and people of color.

The effect of this wage gap follows women throughout their lives. Since pension and Social Security benefits are based on pay earned while working, women’s economic security in old age is jeopardized. Retired women who worked in the private sector receive benefits worth about 40 percent of those earned by retired men. While women in the public sector fare somewhat better, their pensions still represent only half of men’s. This differential is a major reason that older women are twice as likely as older men to live in poverty.