SF Women's Group Members Recognize 'Equal Pay Day' At Board Of Supes Meeting
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Members from a women's organization recognized Tuesday as Equal Pay Day at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday afternoon and called on city leaders to support equal pay for women.
Cathy Corcoran and Roberta Guise from the San Francisco chapter of the American Association of University Women highlighted the wage gap between men and women that is symbolically recognized on April 8.
Today represents when a fulltime working woman's earnings catch up to a man's earnings from 2013 -- more than three months later.
On average, women in the U.S. earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.
For black and Hispanic women the pay disparity is even greater.
The day is held each year to call for the end of pay discrimination since President John F. Kennedy signed the federal Equal Pay Act in 1963.
Supervisor David Chiu said the impact of pay inequity goes beyond women, but onto their families and ultimately the local economy as women often making a majority of household purchasing decisions.
He directed the supervisors' attention to PayDay candy bars placed at each city leaders' seat.
Guise, a public policy co-chair of the AAUW, told the board that when they took a bite out of the chocolate bar the first bite represents "the missing pay women endure every year."
In a proclamation from President Barack Obama recognizing today as National Equal Pay Day, he said, "Yet from boardrooms to classrooms to factory floors, their talent and hard work are not reflected on the payroll."
He said about women, "Over her lifetime, the average American woman can expect to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars to the earnings gap, a significant blow to both women and their families."
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