This Equal Pay Day—Let’s Work to Pass Paid Time to Care

By: Mai Chong Xiong

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day, the day where women’s average wages “catch-up” to what white men earned in 2018.

That’s right—three additional months.

As a mother and worker, this issue hits close to home for me. On average, women earn 0.80 cents to the dollar, but the wage gap is worse for women of color. Black women earn 0.61 cents to the dollar, Native women 0.58 cents, and Latina women 0.53 cents. Hmong women’s equal pay day isn’t until September.

The underlying causes of the wage gap are structural and systemic. We need a slate of solutions, both cultural and political, to close the gap.

THIS IS PERSONAL.

When I had my first child, I was privileged to take paid maternity leave for twelve weeks with a combination of short-term disability, paid leave, and vacation hours. Just a few days after we came home from the hospital, my father-in-law had a heart attack and was hospitalized for weeks.

Between caring for a newborn and a sick loved one, my husband lost his job because he had taken “too much” time to care for his family. Our savings depleted quickly and we tapped into our credit cards. That was three years ago, and we’re still feeling the after effects of this—burdened by debt due to caring for a loved one.

I know countless other TakeAction Minnesota members with similar experiences.

Amanda Kegley, one of our members in Inver Grove Heights, had to take a lot of unpaid time off this winter to stay home with her kids when school was cancelled. She doesn’t have access to Earned Sick and Safe Time (ESST) at her job in a company tax department. When her kids are sick, she takes unpaid time off to care for them. And then when she catches what they’ve got, she goes into work sick because she can’t afford to take more time off.

THIS IS A GENDER JUSTICE ISSUE.

Women are 10 times more likely to stay home with a sick child than men, and women are disproportionately caregivers to ill and aging family members. Mothers often report feeling strained by lack of policies that support working parents.

And a study by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) found that only 36% of transgender and gender non-binary respondents reported that their employers have LGBTQ-inclusive leave policies, and only 15% had access to paid leave to care for a loved one.

On average, Minnesota women who are working full-time lose a combined total of nearly $15 billion every year due to the wage gap. We can’t afford NOT to invest in our families and communities.

WE CAN TAKE STEPS TO CLOSE THE WAGE GAP TODAY.

This session, we can take meaningful steps to supporting workers and closing the wage gap. Our families are worth it.

We can start by passing Paid Family and Medical Leave and Earned Sick and Safe Time statewide, so that no worker has to worry that caring for themselves or a loved one will cost them their job or their financial stability.

• Sign our ESST petition and make sure workers across the state have access to the time they need to care for themselves and their loved ones.
• Learn more about Paid Family and Medical Leave and share your story.
• Tweet today and share why ESST and PFML are important to closing the wage gap. Tag us: @TakeActionMN and join the conversation by using #EqualPayDay and #MNleg