By. Cassandra Welchlin
Today Mississippi Women’s Economic Security Initiative and the nation is commemorating Women’s Equality Day, celebrating the passage of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. While we know that the 19th Amendment only gave some women the right to vote, we want to take today to remember all the victories women have since achieved in our country. Nevertheless, we must also remember how much further we have to go to achieve equity and justice for all people.
Women of the United States have historically been treated as second-class citizens and have often been denied the full rights and privileges, public or private, legal or institutional, which are available to male citizens of the United States. The observance of Women’s Equality Day not only commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment but also calls attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality.
For women of color, the struggle for full equality is even greater. In this country and in the South there exist legacies of racialized and sexualized violence and structural disenfranchisement under slavery and Jim Crow that had differential impacts on women.
In Mississippi, women make up half the work force but are two-thirds of the minimum wage workers. Women earn overall on average 75 cents for every $1 men earn. A mom who works full time, year-round in Mississippi earns just 67 cents for every $1 earned by a dad working full time. However, for black women and women of color according to the National Women’s Law Center, black women working full-time jobs typically make only 63 cents for every dollar paid to their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts.
Last legislative session, we organized a bipartisan coalition within the legislature that pushed for an equal pay bill that would prohibit wage discrimination on the basis of gender but would also promote pay transparency by removing restrictions on employee’s discussing their wages with their colleagues. The specific legislation would have required equal pay for comparable work, and ensure jobs offered by the same employer providing more opportunities for merit-based pay increases are equally accessible to all genders.
Pay equity is not a partisan issue. Women across race, socio-economic status, religion and political affiliation are affected by gender inequality in our wages. This is about women putting food on the table, paying for child care, clothing our children, paying for college tuition, and paying medical care for our love. As women, we have a right to live in dignity, free from oppression and discrimination.
There are three ways you can be involved in this effort to get a pay equity bill:
- Signing up to receive action alerts
- Tell us your story of how you’ve experienced pay inequality
- Invite us to host a community conversation in your community.
Let’s build power to break all ceilings for women and women of color.
*Cassandra Welchlin is director of the Mississippi Women’s Economic Security Initiative, a project of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative.