Today, April 14, is National Equal Pay Day, which is designed to highlight the issue of gender/pay gap.

Why does National Equal Pay Day fall in the month of April? Because that’s how far into the year it is estimated that a woman must work to earn what a man earned in the previous year! Pay-equity.org is urging supporters to wear red today to symbolize how far behind women and minorities are in their pay.

We have a long way to go, inside and out of tech on this issue. As has been reported by the Government’s Department of Labor, overall women who work full-time still make 78 cents for every dollar a male counterpart makes. You can see details here. This despite the fact that the Equal Pay Act was enacted in 1963! (Ironically, at the height of the Mad Men era.)

AAUW (American Association of University Women), one of the champions in the fight to end wage discrimination, notes that for some inexplicable reason, there is a 7% difference in the earnings of males and females just one year after they graduate college. AAUW also reports that in 2013, the disparity is even greater for Hispanics, African Americans, American Indian and Native Hawaiian women.

Furthermore AAUW reports, “working mothers are often penalized for having children, while fatherhood generally tends to boost a man’s career.” In fact, the latter was the basis of my recent talk “Boardroom or Baby” at SXSW Interactive, which was designed to begin to tackle this issue.

The good (and sometimes painful) news is that pay rates and gender discrimination have been in the news a lot lately!

Earlier this year we applauded the Academy Award winning actress Patricia Arquette for her conscious-raising remarks at the Oscar bash. (See my earlier blog.)

And pay equity is a priority for the newly minted U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton – who weighed in on the topic at the Women in Tech Conference in Silicon Valley and said in her keynote, “She’s right — it is time to have wage equality once and for all.”

President Obama clearly supports fair pay. I’m just guessing, but I think as the smart son of a single working mother he saw first-hand how wage discrimination worked. In his tenure he has signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and established the National Equal Pay Task Force. You can read more here about two new executive actions to help combat pay discrimination and strengthen enforcement of equal pay laws.

Then, there are the many recent lawsuits in the tech world that demonstrate how far we have to go in terms of pay and discrimination. (I won’t go into them here.)

Needless to say, it’s enough to make anyone see red. I think any fair-minded person, no matter what their gender or identity would agree.
So what can you do besides wear red today? You can get a free equal payday kit here with a lot of suggestions. And you can educate yourself. There’s an illuminating fact sheet supplied by AAUW.

Finally… as a woman, or a minority, or really as any employee, you should feel free to ask for a wage increase if you think you are due one! It’s amazing when you review the statistics of people who just don’t ask for a wage increase.

So, while I wouldn’t say National Equal Pay Day is really cause for celebration, we can use it to raise awareness. And you can wear red… I am.