The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, enacted just over four years ago, intended to take on the issue of the gender gap in pay. Leleh Hassibi, of PayScale, summarizes the Act nicely in an article on January 29th.
Many experts on both sides of the political spectrum argue whether or not the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act closed the gap in pay between men and women. According to PayScale:
“Overall the wage gap still exists, with women making about 80 cents to the dollar that men make. In fact, the wage gap is still such a concern that congress kicked off its new session last week by revisiting the topic. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, which is aimed at ending wage discrimination between men and women working in the same position basically by allowing more transparency in wages.”
A 20% gap is no laughing matter, however, further research from PayScale tells a slightly different story:
“What we found was that, when comparing apples to apples, the gap is much smaller than the overall statistic. In fact, in many skilled positions, women’s wages are lagging by only about 5 percent.”
Data-driven technology, such as PayScale, allows for instant market-data aggregated from employers and employees, which may prove to be more valuable than government statistics — which is typically a small sample of a large population. The bottom line, however, is that a gap in pay by gender still exists and employers should take the time to review compensation for positions in their organization on a consistent basis.
Sources:
- http://blogs.payscale.com/compensation/2013/01/was-the-lilly-ledbetter-act-enough.html
- Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act