Women's advocates in Boston want the Massachusetts State House to do more to ensure women receive "equal pay for equal work." A press event earlier this month mostly celebrated proposed legislation to increase penalties for businesses violating equal pay statutes and further regulate compensation practices, but some women leaders recognized that laws alone cannot eradicate the wage gap between men and women.
Megan Costello, director of Boston's women's advancement office, was quoted in the NewBostonPost explaining: "It's not just up to government, it's not just about legislation…. This has to be a collective effort – of government, of business, of the nonprofit world, of individual citizens – because we do not do this alone."
Many Americans are taking a welcome break this summer from the relentless tug-of-war in our political debates. But that's not so in the Massachusetts State House where officials are rehashing one of the most well-worn issues in modern politics: the so-called wage gap between male and female workers.
The Department of Labor (DOL) statistic underlying the "wage gap" claim simply compares a full-time working man's median wages with those of a full-time working woman. The DOL says that women on average are paid only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns.
