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Online Survey Raises Women’s Voices in the Labor Movement

July 26, 2010

Working women know the value of a stable job in a rough economy – and the AFL-CIO wants them to tell the broader labor movement their views.

The online “Ask a Working Woman” survey at the federation’s Web site invites women to weigh in on job, family and economic issues. The anonymous survey takes about seven minutes to complete and runs through the end of July.

Though women have made great strides in the workplace over the past decades, inequities between men and women remain.

Even after the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963, women today make about $0.78 for every dollar a man earns, frequently for doing similar work. Among women of color, the gap widens. An economist specializing in wage issues estimates that lower-paid women’s work costs the average full-time U.S. female worker between $700,000 and $2 million over the course of her lifetime of employment.

Marking the 47th anniversary of the signing of the Equal Pay Act last month, President Obama said:

All women and their families deserve equal pay. Women now make up nearly half of the nation’s workforce, most homes have two working parents, and 60 percent of all women work full-time. As we emerge from one of the worst recessions in American history, when families are struggling to pay their bills and save for the future, pay inequity only deepens that struggle and hampers our economy’s ability to fully recover.

Obama’s first act as chief executive cleared the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which makes it easier for women to challenge pay discrimination on the job.

For more on the AFL-CIO’s efforts to promote women’s rights at work, click here.