Whatever Happened to Pay Equity?

Poor Lilly Ledbetter must be tearing her hair out.  She is the woman, you may recall, who “sought justice because equal pay for equal work is an American value” some years ago when she learned that she was earning significantly less money than men doing the same managerial work in the Alabama tire plant where she worked for nearly 20 years.

Her legal fight ultimately led her to the Supreme Court in 2007, where in a 5-4 decision, the Court “stood on the side of those who shortchanged my pay, my overtime and my retirement just because I [was] a woman,” she lamented, after the Court ruled that she didn’t report the inequity within the required six months, even though she didn’t discover the discrepancy for nearly two decades. “In the end,” she said, “I didn’t get a dime of the money I was shortchanged.”

What she did get, ultimately, was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, signed into law by President Barack Obama. The law allowed individuals who faced pay discrimination to seek rectification under federal anti-discrimination laws. It also clarified that wage discrimination based on age, religion, national origin, race, sex, and disability would “accrue” every time an employee received a paycheck deemed to be discriminatory. It was the first bill President Obama signed and it became one of several federal laws designed to protect worker's rights.

Prior to that, in 1963, the Equal Paycheck Act, signed by President John F. Kennedy, made it illegal for employers to pay women less for performing the same jobs as their male counterparts. However, it had several loopholes that needed to be addressed. Then Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of sex.

The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 added to those prior acts by reversing the Supreme Court decision that upheld the short statute of limitations for wage discrimination claims that had killed Lilly Ledbetter’s case.

In 2014 the Paycheck Fairness Act was first introduced in the Senate by former Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), essentially as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, but it failed to be adopted.

In January this year Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act of 2021. It passed in the House in April. This bill addresses wage discrimination on the basis of sex, which includes pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics

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A requirement of the Paycheck Fairness Act is that employers must provide detailed information to the federal government that ensures the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Department of Labor have the necessary tools to enforce laws against pay discrimination, including employment-related data from employers analyzed by race, gender, and employees’ national origins.

The Paycheck Fairness Act also prevents retaliation for discussing salary with colleagues and prohibits employers from asking about a person’s salary history. In addition, it allows workers to participate in class action lawsuits that challenge systemic pay discrimination.

That’s all well and good, but why are women still earning 82 cents on the dollar (if they’re white) compared to men and what are the ramifications?

The first thing to understand is that the gender pay gap exists in every occupational category even when accounting for educational levels, skills, and worker’s choices. Assumptions like the ones men and managers often make are a big part of the problem.

For example, one assumption is that women choose lower level or lower paying work because they are mothers who bear the brunt of responsibility in meeting children’s needs. But as the Covid crisis revealed, the lack of childcare in this country leaves women little choice.

Such assumptions ignore the underlying causes of workplace discrimination and often lead to women being pushed out of their chosen career fields. Some of those underlying causes, in addition to not having affordable childcare, are the lack of adequate parental leave policies, flexible working conditions, paid family and medical leave, which most industrialized nations offer.

Importantly, advocates for equal pay underscore the fact that pay discrimination occurs in almost every field of work. Women, who are over-represented in the lowest paid industries, take the hardest hit. Collectively, women lose hundreds of thousands of dollars annually because of the pay gap driven by gender and race.

That loss has real-time, long-term consequences. Underpaid workers, primarily women, suffer lowered social security benefits, retirement pensions, and personal savings, which is why so many female elders find it difficult to survive with dignity in their later years.

The Biden administration understands this dilemma and has a committed focus on pay equity, a particular interest of Vice President Kamala Harris. Major corporations will soon be dealing with multi-million-dollar settlements in class action equal pay claims, and employers are likely to face big changes and a lot of scrutiny with regard to pay equity, not just around gender, but also around race. In addition to federal efforts, states are beginning to step up their equal pay laws too.

All that bodes well, but as we know, things move at a snail’s pace when it comes to enacting and enforcing legislation. Until there is true equality in wages and salaries, women are among many people who continue to wait for fairness in the workplace. For them, 82 cents on the dollar remains inadequate, and clearly insulting.

The Hands That Rock the Cradle Need Help

After MSNBC anchor Katy Tur gave birth to her first child in 2019 she devoted her come back show to the need for a Family Leave policy that matches that of other developed countries. Her plea was personal.  She had undergone an unplanned C-section to deliver her son and had struggled with breastfeeding her small baby who needed to nurse frequently. She also got a post-op infection which slowed down her surgical recovery. All of this made her feel exhausted to the point of hallucinations, and she feared being home alone with her newborn after her supportive husband returned to work. It’s not an atypical story, especially for first-time parents.

“Mothers and fathers need time with their babies and they need support,” she said then. “Lawmakers talk about family leave but nothing gets done. It’s shameful.” She might have made the exact same plea after the birth of her daughter earlier this year.

Tur was one of the lucky ones. Her employer had an excellent, supportive family leave policy. Most women – and men – are not so fortunate. Many women must return to work within a couple of weeks of giving birth because they can’t afford unpaid leave. Seventy percent of men must return to work within ten days or less after becoming a father.

An estimated 80 percent of U.S. employers do not have paid parental leave or have miserably inadequate plans, often following the federal government which gives most federal workers just twelve weeks of paid parental leave. That’s a pittance compared to other countries.

A 2019 study of 41 countries conducted by the Pew Research Center revealed the dismal U.S. situation. Countries like Estonia, which topped the list at 86 weeks of paid leave, Japan, Norway, Luxembourg, Malta, Korea and others had impressive leave policies. The U.S. ranked last.

Clearly, another Labor Day, a day on which we honor the country’s workers, has come and gone and still we fail to support women’s ongoing labor - in the workplace, at home, and essentially after childbirth.

While we have yet to enact a national mandate for paid family leave, some states do have paid leave policies in place. They report a measurable reduction in the number of women leaving their jobs in the first year after giving birth and up to a 50 percent reduction after five years, according to a 2019 study conducted by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Paid leave is gaining more traction as an issue in need of legislation. In addition to an increasing number of national models that shame our own, more U.S. women are in the workforce and more families have two working parents. And paid leave isn’t needed just for new moms and dads. It may be necessary to recover from an illness or to care for a sick or disabled family member or elderly relative.

That’s why The Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMILY) Act was introduced by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D – CT) yet again in 2019.  The Act, modeled after successful state programs, uses a social insurance system to provide workers with comprehensive paid family and medical leave. Comparable models have been passed in four states and the District of Columbia.

This year the two legislators have tried again to get Congress to pass a permanent paid leave policy nationally, arguing in language that male and conservative legislators like; The FAMILY Act, they said, would spur economic recovery and growth.

The Act would ensure that every worker, no matter the size of their employer, self-employed status, or part-time work would have access to twelve weeks of paid leave equal to up to 66 percent of wage replacement for every serious medical event every time it’s needed.

In defending the Act, Sen. Gillibrand noted that the Covid pandemic seriously impacted women in the workforce and hit middle class families hard. “Women have been forced to make the impossible decision between caring for their families or earning a paycheck.”

Rep. DeLauro added, “Long before this crisis there has been a desperate need for paid family and medical leave. This problem must be addressed in a permanent way.”

“It’s a national disgrace that our federal government doesn’t guarantee paid family and medical leave for the American people,” activist Melanie Campbell, CEO of The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, says.

Activists like her and others aren’t mincing words. “They know what it means to go back to work three weeks after giving birth. They know the extraordinary cost of having to start from scratch because of lost income while caring for a loved one with a disability,” Sade Moonsammy of Family Values @ Work said in support of the FAMILY Act, which has been endorsed by more than 85 national organizations.

It’s an Act that is long overdue, as Katy Tur and other new moms and dads know. It’s time to join the list of countries that get it, and care enough to do something meaningful in support of American workers and their families. The hand that rocks the cradle has long needed a hug and a little help. Surely that’s not asking too much.

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Elayne Clift writes about women, health and social issues from Saxtons River, Vt.

Missing in Action: Democrats, Media, Public

Following the debacle created by Attorney General William Barr when he decided unilaterally that Donald Trump wasn’t guilty of collusion or obstruction of justice, it seems appropriate to declare that we are facing dark times in America. It should be clear by now that we are experiencing an unprecedented, deeply dangerous Constitutional crisis that begs the question: Why aren’t Democrats, some media, and the public reacting more vigorously to the growing nightmare of encroaching autocracy, if not outright dictatorship?

Political pundits will continue to deconstruct what happened following the release of the Mueller report for some time. Ideas about what went wrong and why regarding the myriad illegalities rapidly turning us into a Banana Republic will, we hope, ultimately be revealed. I leave that discussion to others.

I am compelled instead to focus on damaging failures by a disturbing number of Democratic leaders, some seasoned media figures, and a somnolent public, who seem insufficiently concerned with the serious threat this country faces: The creeping death of our Republic, so carefully crafted on a a set of principles grounded in the highest ideals and structured in a way as to ensure their continuity.

Now, more than 200 years later, as we watch those principles and ideals being decimated and discarded, how can it be that – with so many canaries in the coalmine – about 40 percent of Americans appear to be inured to the dangers ahead as we face a Constitutional crisis of huge proportion. I repeat: A Constitutional, not a political, crisis that every sentient citizen ought to be deeply troubled by, and none more so than our elected officials.

And yet the speaker of the House of Representatives, and other Democrats, say that Donald Trump isn’t worth impeaching. Or that it’s too soon to impeach. Or that we need more solid evidence of the deep, pervasive culture of corruption this administration and this president have spawned.

I am reminded of the saying, “Today may be too soon, but tomorrow will surely be too late.” For while I understand the argument for taking the time to build a solid case for impeachment in the face of Republican’s incalcitrant political posturing and lack of moral or ethical behavior, I also worry that a duplicative, drawn out inquiry, and more dangerously, expecting voters to rid us of our present scourge at the polls next year is sheer folly. Too many voters don’t seem to understand what’s happening before their eyes and many of them have no interest in the Mueller report. They put Donald Trump in office – or at least the Electoral College did – and now they want to “move on,” while disinformation, voter disenfranchisement, and Russian hacking are likely to grow.

It bears repeating that this is not a political issue. It’s not even solely a moral or ethical issue. We are living through a failure of conscience, of intellect, and of will that every American needs to understand and face with the utmost consciousness. One need only remember the terrible travesties of this administration – the caging of children, the scapegoating of Muslims, the sanctioning of violence, hate crimes, and white supremacy, the vile utterings and copious lies of an ill-equipped and often cruel leader who reveres dictators, the injustices increasingly suffered by so many Americans, the rape of sacred lands and pollution of the environment, the dangerous rollbacks in regulation in the name of profit, the threat of nationalizing media and arresting journalists, and more.

Consider just this one fact:  The Justice Department has itself just obstructed justice. People can argue that we need to address “real issues,” like health care, jobs and the economy. I agree that the media has failed to expose numerous policy issues we face while allowing Mr. Trump to suck all the oxygen out of the air waves. But none of these things will ever be attended to if we don’t recognize the urgency of defeating autocracy before it’s too late.

As for the canaries in the coalmine, none is more prescient, it seems to me, than the deepening misogyny and racism we are witnessing. Where, for example, were the Democrats in Congress when Ilhan Omar was vilified because she is a woman, a person of color, and a Muslim? 

And surely the media, while drawing attention to dangerous Trumpian demagogues hell-bent on destroying our systems of governance, needs to cover more fairly the competent women running for president. Every one of us should be outraged by moves to marginalize, trivialize, and punish these extraordinary women. Such dismissal of women as potential candidates reveals the underbelly of countries dominated by patriarchal autocracies.

The late Norman Birnbaum, illustrious journalistic and scholar, noted that “Modern authoritarianism is not subtle, but it is omnipresent.” He also said “Avoidance, falsification, and trivialization mark our encounter with past and future.” He was right -- modern authoritarianism is staring us in the face.

Let’s hope, therefore, that Winston Churchill was also right. If we act wisely, this may not be “the beginning of the end.” With enough courage to impeach, perhaps it is “the end of the beginning.” A new beginning couldn’t be more timely or urgent.

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Elayne Clift writes about women, health, politics and social justice from Saxtons River, Vt.

The Sham, Shame and Real Purpose of a Senate Committee

The Sham, the Shame, and the Real Purpose of a Senate Committee

In the end it wasn’t what “she said, he said.”  It was what she did, what he did.

She gave moving, credible testimony. He rambled and raged. She was composed and coherent. He was defiant and disrespectful. She was polite and dignified. He was rude and belligerent. She was calm. He dissembled, putting to rest the myth of female hysteria. She was quietly self-assured. He threw a self-pitying, tearful tantrum.  She told the truth. He lied.

The world watched as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford told her riveting and difficult story with grace and courage. Then it watched, cringing, as Judge Brett Kavanaugh stumbled his way to self-aggrandizement and entitlement, unleashing a dangerous temper unsuited to service on the Supreme Court.

They witnessed a Senate Judiciary Committee in shambles as Republican members, all white men, reprised behavior familiar from the vile verbiage visited upon Anita Hill in 1991, including by two senators who were on the committee when she testified.

The contrast between the morning hearings when Dr. Ford gave her difficult opening statement and the afternoon when Kavanaugh simpered his Trumpian opening remarks couldn’t have been starker. The morning was civil and respectful. The female prosecutor hired to ask Republicans’ questions, while interrogating Dr. Ford as if it were a trial, said nothing overtly offensive.

Later, the civility ended when Republican committee members reverted to form, Senator Lindsay Graham spewing invectives at his Democratic colleagues while exonerating Kavanaugh.  It was then that the prosecutor, who’d been assigned to ask Republicans’ questions, disappeared, fired midstream when she asked something Republicans found dangerous.

Could anything make clearer what Republican men on the committee think of women?  Could they have treated Dr. Ford, Senator Dianne Feinstein, or the prosecutor with more contempt?

What was happening as we watched the fiasco? What is the real issue?

It’s sexism. Misogyny. Male privilege and male sense of entitlement. It’s the patriarchal power struggle grounded in robbing women of agency, autonomy – even over their own bodies - and a place in the public square. And it’s gone on forever.

Aristophanes understood that in 411 BC when he wrote Lysistrata, a play about women using their sexual power to stop war. Susan B. Anthony and the women at the 1848 women’s convention faced it when they fought for women’s suffrage. Contemporary women recognized it when Anita Hill was trashed. We know it now as we continue to fight for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and the right to privacy and decision-making in our reproductive lives.

We live in a culture where male privilege and power are embedded, entrenched in every sector of society, from corporations and churches to academia, entertainment and news organizations, sports, science, and medicine. It’s a culture in which females are admonished to nurture and ensure the comfort of males while at the same time, we are reminded to protect ourselves from the uncontrollable sexual excesses of males because they can’t help themselves and can’t take responsibility for their behavior. We are taught to be good girls who dress properly, remain abstinent and restrained, who never go anywhere, not even the bathroom, alone. We are trained to be silent.

When women found the courage to tell Sigmund Freud about their sexual abuse he labeled their stories fantasies. Anita Hill was told that too. That’s why women don’t tell their stories. “No one will believe me,” they say.

Now that’s changing. In the last month calls to sexual abuse hotlines have spiked by 200 percent. Friends are telling friends. Wives are telling husbands and partners. Girls are telling parents. And women like Ana Marie Archilla and Maria Gallagher, the two brave women who demanded that Senator Jeff Flake look at them when they were talking to him, are putting politicians on notice: We are not going to be invisible or quiet or silent any longer. We matter!

As Rebecca Traister wrote in a New York Times editorial, and as poet Audre Lord, feminist writer Carolyn Heilbrun, and activists like Tarana Burke, founder of the Me Too Movement, recognize, what has been denied to women until now is anger and expressions of anger. That stops now. We are speaking up, crying out, and refusing to be silenced any longer.  

So, as I write this commentary a cursory, controlled FBI investigation aimed at appeasement is occurring. The outcome of that investigation and what happens subsequently carries deep significance for our political future. But it doesn’t match the importance of what is happening in our culture as we make change and see it coming, however slowly.

It is coming because of courageous women like Anita Hill, Christine Blasey Ford, Ana Maria Archilla, Maria Gallagher, and the multitudes of others who will not be silent  any more in the face of violence perpetrated against them. We will no longer defer to malicious men. We will no longer suffer political rape symbolized by the cry to “plow through” uttered by men in power. We will fight with everything we’ve got until men crawl kicking and screaming toward seeing, hearing, believing and respecting women.

It begins with three simple words: “I believe her.” And “thank you, Christine.”

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Stay Awake, America! We're Heading for the Abyss

Right after the election of Donald Trump, I was anxious in a cerebral way.  I experienced a level of anxiety, disbelief and grave concern that can be energizing and I jumped into the resistance movement full steam ahead, full of adrenalin produced by stress.

Now I find myself in a state of deep, visceral anxiety. I am truly afraid – of lots of things. Anti-Semitism and white supremacists. A Muslim ban and immigration policy that have barely begun to reveal their terrible consequences.  The threat of being too late to save the planet from the effects of climate change and global warming. The threat of nuclear war. The idea of millions of people dying for lack of health care. The demise of public education and necessary regulation. The disasters waiting to happen if we don’t fix our failing roads, rails, bridges, tunnels and airports.

But even worse than that, I’m afraid because I can see truth dying in this country and because I think the freedoms we take for granted will be next. I’m afraid because conspiracy theories designed to destroy our trust in the institutions that have existed to keep us “free and the brave” are giving way to an alternative reality. I’m afraid because we are rapidly descending into a state of nationalism in which a few madmen will kill our system of checks and balances, ignore our justice system, attempt mind control by denying media legitimacy as they spew lies that people begin to believe because they are repeated so often.

Think that’s going too far?  Why, then, have agencies been rapidly dismantled, their senior staff fired, so that no institutional memory or proven expertise prevails? Why have government agencies been silenced? Why has critical information been removed from agency websites? Why are Alt-Right media being credentialed while mainstream reporters are denigrated and denied access? Why are so many clearly corrupt, unqualified people now in charge?

When all these egregious, undemocratic actions began occurring, we cautioned against “normalizing” what was happening. Now we are beginning to hear a new word: “Destabilization.”  That’s a serious word, one that we can no longer ignore or make nervous jokes about.  Our collective fear is not subliminal now; it has grown into overt, overwhelming anxiety because we are staring at the real possibility of witnessing the demise of democracy in the face of rising fascism. 

The idea that our future is in the hands of a few deranged demagogues is nothing short of terrifying.  Our president is not the leader of the free world; he is the emperor with no clothes and he is madly marching toward the abyss, dragging us behind him.

So, my question is: Why are we so powerless to stop him and his cronies? How do we move beyond hand-wringing and bearing witness before it’s too late? (And there comes a time when it is too late.) We are, of course, up against a Congress largely devoid of compassion and intellect, but we must bring enough pressure to bear on our legislators that we deny the encroaching evil. It falls to us, concerned constituents, to ensure such evil does not prevail. It falls to us to see that America does not die for lack of goodness.

As Rabbi Hillel once asked, “If not now, when? If not me, who?”

Every day social media and mainstream news reveal more Russian collusion, more heinous decisions emanating from the West Wing asylum, more lies, more Draconian travesties from Donald Trump’s henchmen. They simply cannot be allowed to continue.

Nor can the Mar a Lago madman in the attic. We cannot think that reason will ultimately rid us of his scourge . Reason alone will not stem the tidal wave of his hate or rid us of his putrid swamp, full of predators snapping at our feet.

We have heard already the language of “purges” and women as “hosts,” both terms reeking of 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale.  We’ve seen good people, like TSA agents, airline personnel and border patrol, do bad things. We’ve seen bad people do bad things, like deface synagogues, burn down mosques, march in favor of killing people or forcing them to abandon the country of their birth.

We can’t wait for a dramatic disaster to understand that the time has come to reclaim our country and to take back its values. We can’t allow ourselves to be sucked into the irreversible vortex of Bannon’s nationalism or Putin’s agenda or Trump’s narcissism.

And so I ask again, as Rabbi Hillel did: If not now, when? If not us, who? And if not now, and not us, will we be forced, sooner than we think, to ask how it happened?