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We are a non-profit state federation. Our membership includes women and men of every age, race, religion, political party and socio-economic background. We are a leading advocate on work-life balance and workplace equity issues.

In this section, you will read recent news releases and advocacy concerns as well as view our opinion editorials and letters to the editor. Members of the press who are writing about issues of concern to working women are encouraged to contact our Communications Committee at [email protected].

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Working Women and New York’s Wage Gap

Author: Communications Committee/Tuesday, April 15, 2014/Categories: General

Excerpted from National Partnership for Women & Families Fact Sheet, April 2012. Website: http://www.nationalpartnership.org/research-library/workplace-fairness/fair-pay/working-women-and-new-yorks.pdf

New York Working Women and the State’s Wage Gap

In New York, on average, a woman working full time is paid $40,584 per year, while a man working full time is paid $49,174 per year. This creates a wage gap of $8,590 between full-time working men and women in the state.

What does the wage gap mean for working women in New York?

As a group, full-time working women in new york lose approximately $22,340,027,689 each year due to the wage gap. If the wage gap were eliminated, New York’s working women and their families would have enough money for:

  • 64 more weeks of food (1.2 years’ worth);
  • 4.4 more months of mortgage and utilities payments;
  • 9 more months of rent;
  • 3 more years of family health insurance premiums; or
  • More than 2 ,000 additional gallons of gas.

The women of New York are increasingly responsible for the economic security of their families and cannot afford to face discrimination and lower wages.

  • More than 63 percent of working mothers in New York bring in more than a quarter of their families’ income, and 1,050,106 households in New York are headed by women.
  • More than 26 percent of women-headed households in New York live below the poverty level. Eliminating the wage gap would provide critical income to 279,328 families living in poverty.

Women and families suffer when women are underpaid. nationally, in 2009, women working full-time, year-round were paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. African American women were paid only 61 cents, and Latinas only 52 cents, for every dollar paid to white, non-hispanic men. t he wage gap has been closing at a rate of less than half a cent per year since the passage of the 1963 Equal Pay Act, when women were paid 58.9 cents for every dollar paid to men. Unless we expedite our progress, the wage gap will not close completely until 2058 – when today’s high school students will be preparing for retirement. The wage gap is not a matter of personal choice.

According to a 2003 government accountability office study, the wage gap remains even when accounting for personal choices – such as work patterns and education. m others tend to pay a “penalty” for having children while fathers get a bonus: w omen with children are paid 2.5 percent less than women without children, while men with children experience an earnings boost of 2.1 percent over men without children.

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