Respect My Existence or Expect My Resistance

Sometime in late August, The Trump administration suspended a policy proposed by President Obama that required large companies to report how much they pay workers by race and gender. Obama’s Equal Pay Rule was intended to help close the persistent gender and racial wage gap by increasing pay transparency. Thereby, making it easier for women and people of color to identify whether they were being paid less than white male counterparts at work. The Administration's action to suspend a pivotal Obama-era initiative is an unacceptable and deliberate attack on women in the workplace, especially for women of color who are making the least money for the same amount work.

Over the last century, women have made incredible steps towards achieving gender equality in our society. Yet there's still a lot of work to be done. Considering that It's 2017 and the wage gap issue in this country doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t demand change. Studies have found that for every dollar a man makes, a woman typically makes 80 cents for doing the same job and for African-American women and Latinas the pay gap is larger, being paid only 63 cents and 54 cents, for every dollar a man makes. The gender wage gap is a clear indication of our failure to enact the policies needed to promote equality in our workplaces and fair pay for all. Better policies will not be enacted until we elect public officials that understand the lives of young and older women as well as unmarried women.

As of now, there's effectively no federal law aimed at helping achieve pay equity for women. Therefore, It's time to start demanding some serious change. Some of the ways to achieve equal pay are by changing legislation to ensure equal pay for equal work. Such as Strengthening equal pay laws so women are better able to fight back against pay discrimination, ensuring women's access to the affordable reproductive health care they need, raising the minimum wage and ensuring tipped workers earn the regular wage before tips and providing paid family and medical leave would be ways to help close the gap. Furthermore, our legislators have the power to create that change and we can start off by contacting our elected officials and letting them know that the gender wage gap is an issue that's important to you. Also, looking into the future women need to register to vote, go out and vote and make sure that the candidates we're looking to support, represent and support us. Moreover, at a personal level, you can always ask for more money by asking for a raise or negotiating your starting salary. It's important to speak up and let your employer know your worth.

If the wage gap conditions don't change, it will be awhile before change happens. Seeing that according to the AAUW, there could be pay equity by 2059. But the problem is that the progress of the pay gap has considerably slowed down since 2001. If the rate of change continues to slow down, the gender wage gap won't close until 2119. It could take approximately 102 years for there to be pay equity between men and women. It shouldn’t take a century to get equal pay. 102 years is too long to wait for what we deserve today. Its time to close the pay gap women are worth more, equal pay for equal work.