Equal Pay Day is April 8, 2014. This date symbolizes how far into 2014 women must work to earn what men earned in 2013. Because women earn less, on average, than men, they must work longer for the same amount of pay. The wage gap is even greater for most women of color. According to the AAUW’s study “The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap,” 2014 edition, “The gender pay gap affects all women, but for black and Hispanic women the pay shortfall is worse. Asian American women’s salaries show the smallest gender pay gap at 87 percent of white men’s earnings. Hispanic women’s salaries show the largest gap, at 53 percent of white men’s earnings. From elementary and middle schoolteachers to computer programmers, women are paid less than men in female-dominated, gender-balanced, and male-dominated occupations. Women typically earn about 90 percent of what men are paid until they hit 35. After that median earnings for women are typically 75–80 percent of what men are paid.”

The California Federation of Business and Professional Women works to help women legislatively and via education to overcome this imbalance. The Business and Professional Women is the oldest organization of its kind in the world; devoted entirely and actively to the interests and needs of all women irrespective of their occupations and of their status. Our mission is to achieve equity for all women in the workplace through advocacy, education and information. Our founders fought for women’s rights by securing commissions for nurses who served in World War I and ensuring that both men and women could take civil service exams for government positions. Today, we continue the fight for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, the ratification of the  CEDAW treaty and equal pay for women. For information see http://bpwcal.org/.