THE SITUATION: While the economic crisis is impacting the lives and opportunities of all Americans, unmarried women are struggling with additional barriers.
THE PROBLEM: The pay gap has both short and long term consequences on the lives of women and their families.
Gender Pay Gap: Unmarried women earn only 56 cents for every dollar that married men make. Women’s median wages overall pay only 78 cents for every dollar men earn. Over her lifetime, an unmarried woman faces hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars of lost income. [Center for American Progress, 4/25/08]
Increased Likelihood of Income Drop: Female-headed households have twice the likelihood – 13.5% - of seeing a 50% greater drop in their income than male-headed households’ probability – 6.6% - of such a drop. [Majority Staff of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, 4/18/08]
Insufficient Savings. The median net worth of unmarried women was $12,900 – less than half the $26,850 for unmarried men. The wage gap is the primary cause of this inequality of wealth – accounting for 39% of the disparity for never-married households and 18% of the disparity for divorced households. [Majority Staff of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, 4/18/08]
Lack of Retirement Security: More than one-third of single women report that they have saved less than $25,000 for retirement, while only one in 10 report having saved more than $100,000. [Ninth Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey, 9/17/08]
Increased Risk of Bankruptcy: Single women are the most likely demographic group to file for bankruptcy and comprise 40% of all bankruptcy filings. [MSN Money]
High Poverty Rate: More than half of all poor adult women - 54 percent - are single with no dependent children. Twenty-six percent of poor adult women are single women with dependent children. [Center for American Progress, 10/08]
THE SOLUTION: Unmarried women want more than rhetoric about the equal pay issue. It’s time to do something.
Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act: Congress must pass the Paycheck Fairness Act to deter wage discrimination by closing loopholes in the Equal Pay Act and barring retaliation against workers who disclose their wages. Over time, courts have severely limited women’s rights under the Equal Pay Act of 1963, allowing employers to escape liability for paying men more than women doing equal work.
Pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: Congress must pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to restore the long-standing and widely accepted rule that women may challenge each discriminatory paycheck they receive. In 2007, the Supreme Court made it virtually impossible for women and others subject to pay discrimination to go to court to vindicate their rights, holding that any challenges to pay discrimination must be filed within 180 days of an employee’s first discriminatory paycheck or be forever barred.
