This is what infoplease.com says
“The Equal Pay Act was signed in 1963, making it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who hold the same job and do the same work. At the time of the EPA’s passage, women earned just 58 cents for every dollar earned by men. By 2006, that rate had only increased to 77 cents, an improvement of less than half a penny a year. Minority women fare the worst. African-American women earn just 64 cents to every dollar earned by white men, and for Hispanic women that figure drops to merely 52 cents per dollar.

Over the past 40 years the real median earnings of women have fallen short by an estimated $700,000 to $2 million. During a lifetime of full-time work (47 years) this gap amounts to an estimated loss in wages for women of $700,000 for high school graduates, $1.2 million for a college graduate, and $2 million for a professional school graduate.

If working women earned the same as men (those who work the same number of hours; have the same education, age, and union status; and live in the same region of the country), their annual family incomes would rise by $4,000 and poverty rates would be cut in half.”

Seriously, poverty is cut in half. That says something about our beliefs of the “lazy” poor people.  We need to address the inequality of the working poor. It comes down to opportunity, or lack of. Education, or lack of. Access to resources like the world wide web, or lack of.

This news is from alternet.org, from The Wage Gap Lives On.

“The U.S. Supreme Court recently dealt a blow to women’s ability to sue their employers for pay discrimination. In the 5-4 Ledbetter v. Goodyear decision handed down last year, the court’s majority ruled that employees cannot sue unless they have first filed a formal complaint with a federal agency within 180 of the discriminatory pay being set. Since salary information is often secret, a woman may not know she was paid less until the clock has run out.”

How fair is that? This ruling seems to instionalize the Wage Gap.

“Employers put women in a category where they think they’re not going to be reliable,” said Janet Chung, and attorney with the Northwest Women’s Law Center in Seattle. “It’s not just about pregnancy, but the whole frontier of family responsibility discrimination. They may think a newly married, younger woman will become pregnant soon and not be committed to her job. Or if she has children, they may assume she doesn’t want to travel. Rather than assessing a woman’s performance on the job, they make assumptions.”

So what do you do? Educate yourself. Here are the top earning professions for women. Do some research. I think Monster.com has the best salary checker, if you have a non-traditional job title, you have to play around with it.

Occupations with Highest Median Weekly Earnings Among Women, 2005