WASHINGTON (Washington Insider Magazine) – The White House is recognizing Equal Pay Day by making additional efforts to close the pay gap between men and women among federal employees and contractors.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order encouraging the government to explore prohibiting federal contractors from asking about job candidates’ previous wage histories. Furthermore, a new U.S. Department of Labor Regulation aims to increase government contractors’ responsibility to audit payrolls in order to prevent wage discrepancies based on gender, ethnicity , or race.
According to ABC NEWS, the Department of Personnel Management is also drafting a legislation to curb the use of past wage history in recruiting and determining compensation for government employees.
Equal Pay Day is intended to highlight how much more women have to work in order to make what men earned the previous year.
For example, women who stayed in the labor force and worked long hours during the pandemic often earned more than their peers who ended up losing low-paying job positions, implying that pay inequality data from previous years cannot be compared with 2020 figures, according to Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Women’s Law Center.
According to a senior government source who reviewed the government’s efforts on Monday, the Biden administration intends to battle occupational segregation to provide women greater access to well-paying occupations, which continue to be male-dominated.
The administration released a national gender policy in October to promote women and girls’ full involvement in society.
This year, the government is searching for new strategies to tackle pay inequities and highlighting high-profile attempts to close the pay gap, such as the $24 million discrimination settlement reached by the US women’s national soccer team with US Soccer in February.
The deal includes a guarantee to match the men’s team’s salaries and incentives.
Biden, Vice President Harris, and some other administration officials scheduled a Tuesday afternoon ceremony with players of the women’s soccer team to commemorate Equal Pay Day.
Tucker believes that fair pay is still a long way off, especially in the aftermath of the epidemic.
In February 2022, there were about 1.1 million less women in the labor force than in Feb. 2020, indicating that they are neither employed or looking for a job.
According to the White House, in 2020, an average woman who worked full-time throughout the year received 83 cents for every dollar as opposed to her male counterpart performing the same employment. For Native and Black American women, as well as Latinas, the disparity is considerably greater.
Women are affected by this condition even later on in life. According to a 2020 Brookings Institution research on women’s retirement, women’s Social Security payouts are on average 80% of men’s.
