A Woman's Work Never Ends

"All men are created equal" is the phrase that rings in every American's ear and is considered to be the idea that expresses the foundation of American democracy. But is this statement truly portrayed in our society today? Every woman who works a similar job with similar hours as a man who gets paid more than she does would beg to differ. Over the years, just as colonists fought for independence from Britain, African-American slaves defended their rights of freedom and racial equality, and Mexican farm workers went on strike to gain respect and fair wages from growers, it is time that women demand that employers overcome their gender biases and pay their male and female workers equally.

In 1963, women spoke out and were able to initiate the forming of the law called the Equal Pay Act, an amendment to the already existing Fair Labor Standards Act. The act requires employers to pay all employees equally for equal work, regardless of their gender. However, this law has a very big weakness; it only applies when men and women are doing the exact same work, yet in the past, women have been denied many types of work and have had limited entree to managerial positions. Therefore, the act affects a very small number of women. In fact, Census Bureau figures show that women working full-time jobs still earn seventy-three cents for every dollar men earn, less than half of a penny per year increase since the fifty-eight cents to a dollar ratio of female to male wages of 1963 when the Equal Pay Act was implemented.

Where are every woman's twenty-seven cents? They are definitely not going towards supporting their children or their households. Sixty-four percent of women claim that they make over half of their families' income, and if these women are underpaid for their work, how can they support their families? Women's work is the bridge out of poverty for many married couple working families and fair wages are even more crucial for single, working mothers whose pay is the only income. If women were paid justly, their work would not only bring their families out from the depths of poverty, but raise them to comfortable living standards in which their children would no longer fear going to school on the first day wearing hand-me-downs or out-of-style shoes, no longer have to worry about not having enough money to pay for college tuition, no longer be hungry, no longer have to come home to an empty house because