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PITTSBURGH (Newsradio 1020 KDKA) - Tuesday is Equal Pay Day, calling attention to the gender pay gap and asking for legislation to close it.
Census Bureau data reveals women are paid 80 cents on the dollar compared to men, that number is even lower for women of color.
Last year, Governor Tom Wolf signed an executive order ending the practice of state agencies requiring a job applicant to provide their salary history in an effort to close the gender pay gap, as he told KDKA Radio's Larry and John, “Let’s start from scratch, what is this job worth, I don’t care who you are, we’re going to ignore what you made before.”
The gap equates to a woman earning over $10,000 less than a man each year. In a lifetime of work, that could results in a loss of over $400,000.
Wolf added 40 percent of U.S. households have women as the sole or primary earner and closing the pay gap could alleviate another major issue, “Think of what that would do to poverty in the United States we’d make a big non-taxpayer financed solution for a big source of poverty in the United States.”
Wolf said Pennsylvania's equal pay laws have not been updated since 1967.
The Paycheck Fairness Act, intended to close the gender pay gap, recently passed the US House
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