On Friday, President Obama announced a plan requiring companies with over 100 employees to annually report salary data by race, gender and ethnicity, the New York Times reports.
Timed to the seventh anniversary of his signing of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which loosened requirements for challenging discriminatory pay, Obama’s proposal would expand upon and replace a previous executive order requiring federal contractors to report salary info.
Women’s salaries amount to 79 percent of their male equivalent, on average (the median wage of a woman working full-time in the U.S. is $39,600, versus a man’s earnings of $50,400), and according to a fact sheet released by the White House: “While the gap has narrowed slightly over the past two years” since Obama’s previous executive orders were put into place, “there is much more work to be done to ensure fair pay for all.”
In addition to pay data collection, the President is “renewing” his plea to Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would provide women with additional methods for fighting discrimination. Thus far, Republicans have preferred to keep their gender discrimination, thank you very much; Republicans like Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) have noted that laws like the Paycheck Fairness Act would only result in “more lawsuits,” which, as Erin Ryan previously pointed out on this site, “is a fun way to admit that businesses are probably paying women less in a way that’s egregious enough to merit legal action.”
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