英语课程计划-Equal Pay Day（在线收听）

Equal Pay Day is an American day of awareness to highlight the fact that American men earn more than women for doing the same jobs. It is held on April 15 because this is how far into a new year that a woman must work to earn what a man earned in the previous year. Statistics released in 2008 showed that women earned on average 77.8 percent of their male colleagues’ earnings. Asian American women did a little better than this. For African American and Hispanic women, the figure was lower. This is happening in America today, even though equal pay was passed into law in 1963. Many women see the equality as doubly unfair because statistics also show that American women are better educated than men.

On Equal Pay Day, thousands of business and professional women and hundreds of civil rights and labour organizations take part in fair pay campaigns. They hold events across America demanding a fair wage. A lot of the campaigning is coordinated by the National Committee on Pay Equity, which started Equal Pay Day in 1996. Eula Tate of the Coalition of Labor Union Women says equal pay is not just a woman’s issue: “If women are only paid 77 cents when they should get a dollar, their family suffers....Working families lose about $200 billion in income every year because of this pay discrimination,” she said. Campaigners usually wear red ribbons on this day as a symbol of how women and minorities are “in the red” with their pay.