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EEOC & OPM Vow Equal Pay Enforcement in Letter

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Photo: Rob Hill

Equal pay laws for federal employees will be rigorously enforced, says an Aug. 18 letter from both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office of Personnel Management.

A 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office found the gender wage gap for federal employees declined from 28 cents on the dollar in 1987 to 11 cents in 2007.

Seven of the 11 cents could not be explained by differences in education, experience or other non-discriminatory factors.

The letter said both agencies are working with GAO to identify reasons for the wage gap and ways to close the gap.

“Equal pay for equal work is the law, it’s right, and its time has come,” OPM Director John Berry said.

“The federal government should be a model employer in every regard–including equal pay,” EEOC Chair Jacqueline Berrien said.

Click here to read the full letter.

2 Comments

  1. No legislation to date has closed the gender wage gap — not the 1963 Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, not Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, not the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, not the 1991 amendments to Title VII, not affirmative action (which has benefited mostly white women, the group most vocal about the wage gap), not diversity, not the countless state and local laws and regulations, not the horde of overseers at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, not the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act…. Nor will a “paycheck fairness” law work.

    That’s because pay-equity advocates, at no small financial cost to taxpayers and the economy, continue to overlook the effects of this female AND male behavior:

    Despite the 40-year-old demand for women’s equal pay, millions of wives still choose to have no pay at all. In fact, according to Dr. Scott Haltzman, author of “The Secrets of Happily Married Women,” stay-at-home wives, including the childless who represent an estimated 10 percent, constitute a growing niche. “In the past few years,” he says in a CNN report at http://tinyurl.com/6reowj, “many women who are well educated and trained for career tracks have decided instead to stay at home.” (“Census Bureau data show that 5.6 million mothers stayed home with their children in 2005, about 1.2 million more than did so a decade earlier….” at http://tinyurl.com/qqkaka. If indeed more women are staying at home, perhaps it’s because feminists and the media have told women for years that female workers are paid less than men in the same jobs — so why bother working if they’re going to be penalized and humiliated for being a woman.)

    As full-time mothers or homemakers, stay-at-home wives earn zero. How can they afford to do this while in many cases living in luxury? Because they’re supported by their husband, an “employer” who pays them to stay at home.

    Both feminists and the media ignore what this obviously implies: If millions of wives are able to accept no wages and live as well as their husbands, millions of other wives are able to accept low wages, refuse overtime and promotions, work part-time instead of full-time (“According to a 2009 UK study for the Centre for Policy Studies, only 12 percent of the 4,690 women surveyed wanted to work full time.” http://bit.ly/ihc0tl), take more unpaid days off, avoid uncomfortable wage-bargaining — all of which lower women’s average pay. Women are able to make these choices because they are supported or anticipate being supported by a husband who must earn more than if he’d chosen never to marry. (Still, even many men who shun marriage, unlike women, feel their self worth is tied to their net worth.) This is how MEN help create the wage gap. If the roles were reversed so that men raised the children and women raised the income, men would average lower pay than women.

  2. I am not so upset about sex discrimination in pay as i am in the age discrimination in hiring. thoes of us over 40 are being bypassed for jobs.

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