With at most two weeks left in this year’s legislative session, State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson held a press conference in Sacramento Monday to highlight her proposed bill that would bolster California’s old and toothless equal-pay law for women. Most striking was the support Jackson received from the California Chamber of Commerce and at least one Republican lawmaker, Assemblymember Kristin Olsen, a member of the Legislative Women’s Caucus. Not stated — but equally striking — is that the only organization to oppose Jackson’s bill is the California National Organization for Women, which objected Jackson failed to include pay protections based on race, sexual preference, or physical ability.
Ninety-five years after women got the right to vote — celebrated last week — Jackson questioned why the average California woman makes 84 cents for every dollar earned by her male counterpart. For African-American women, the pay gap is 64 cents, and for Latinas, the gap — at 44 cents — is even greater. All combined, Jackson stated, the wage gap cost California women $33 million a year in lost earnings.
California passed its first pay equity act in 1949, and since then, the law has focused narrowly on the question of equal pay for equal work. The problem is that many jobs are largely segregated by gender, rendering the equal pay for equal work equation moot. Instead, Jackson said, her bill would “broaden the focus” to ask whether women are paid less than men for doing jobs that are “substantially similar.” For example, she argued that janitors and housekeepers do “substantially similar” work. But housekeeping, which is predominantly done by women, is paid less than janitorial work, which is done mostly by men.