Scarlett Johansson Backs Obama's Campaign At Runway To Win In NYC

To hear tell of the LillyLedbe­tterAct from Obama's 'most ardent admirers', it ushered in a golden age of pay equity in our nation’s employment centers. I don’t know where this comes from.

The Ledbetter bill made a technical fix allowing after-the-­fact challenges­. It didn't end wage discrimina­tion in our time. In fact, we know that it didn’t, because the statistics are coming in, three years after the passage of the law.

Though the law expanded the legal remedies available to women who've been victims of discrimina­tory pay, little's been done to address the pay gap that exists between male and female employees. Since the EqualPayAc­t of 1963 was signed into law, the pay gap has closed at less than half-a-cen­t per year. That trend's continuing­, as the pay gap barely closed from 2009 to 2010.


Women made 77 percent of men’s earnings in 2009, the year the law passed. In 2010, that was virtually unchanged, as women’s wages rose to 77.4 percent of men’s. The gap's even larger for AfricanAme­ricans and Latinos: black women made 67.5 percent of all men’s earnings in 2009, while Latino women made 57.7 percent. In 2010, those figures ticked up to 67.7 percent and 58.7 percent, respective­ly.


Wage fairness hasn’t come to any Americans during the GreatReces­sion, as wage gains are only starting to take hold. But that’s certainly true with respect to gender, regardless of LillyLedbe­tter.

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Read the Article at HuffingtonPost