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Greetings!
Happy Equal Pay Day! NOT! Not happy that we still have to bring attention to the fact that women are not paid at an equal rate as men and that it still takes more than 3 months for us to catch up to the salary of men. In this edition see our DC Dispatch on Equal Pay Day and a great piece on how to Negotiate Your Way to Equal Pay . Also in this edition:
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Best wishes,
The National Association of Mothers' Centers
(NAMC)
provides programs that empower mothers, fathers and caregivers to find solutions that work for their families, their work lives and their personal lives.
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 DC Dispatch: Equal Pay Day is April 8
Equal Pay Day arrives on April 8, reminding us that women have to work, on average, an addition 3+ months to make the same amount of money that men made in the preceding year. It's all about the gender pay gap, partly caused by the different kinds of jobs men and women tend to fill, and partly caused by the frequency and length of interruptions a woman's worklife sustains from children and caring for others. In spite of the known causes, a significant percentage of the gap has never been explained - bias is the most likely culprit. It's been proven that mothers are less likely to be hired and offered lower starting salaries. It's also a fact that women do far more family care than men, and that caring for others is poorly regarded by our public and private institutions. The imagination doesn't have to stretch very far to see that raising the societal worth placed on care and valuing women's work, both paid and unpaid, are intimately connected. It's also what we are all about here at the National Association of Mothers' Centers. Hail Equal Pay Day - please go away and come back no more!
The Paycheck Fairness Act is being debated in the US Senate TODAY, so please be sure to call or email your Senators and say "I'm a constituent and I support the Paycheck Fairness Act. Please get it passed."
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Mars Needs Moms... and So Do Good Workplaces
 Women have altered their lives to spend more time in paid work. But paid work hasn't changed nearly enough now that half of all workers are female. Both men and women have roles to play at home and in their communities, and ambitions that extend beyond the workplace. Some employers risk losing valuable staff if they can't make the shift. From 7 Ways Employers Drive Away Working Moms: "What happens when professional responsibilities become totally incompatible with parenting duties? Many mothers leave their positions - either to go to other companies, take on part-time work or stop paid work all together." Savvy employers will adapt to be able to attract and retain the best talent.
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A common explanation for the persistent gender pay gap is women's failure to bargain shrewdly for starting salaries, raises or promotions. There's no discrimination at work, some say, it's just that women don't ask for enough or don't know how to strike a deal. But when women do assert themselves, instead of being rewarded like men, they may be punished for acting like them, which is seen as aggressive or pushy. The New York Times tried to help, with
Moving Past Gender Barriers To Negotiate A Raise. Amanda Hess of Slate was not impressed with the impossible and contradictory instructions. "The primer aims to help female employees ask for raises with a careful blend of masculine aggression and feminine deference that's been proven to disarm employers who secretly hate women who act like men, or women who act like women, or women who act like themselves." Rather than encourage women to tie themselves into knots, she suggests, why not teach employers to be less sexist? Now that's a thought....
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Daddy Come Home
 Women's ability to move between paid and unpaid work doesn't happen in a vacuum. Paid family leave is a crucial step towards gender equity only if men take it too. Pressure on families to sup port themselves financially and care for each other has been building for decades, and men feel the stress too. It all exploded last week with the very public debate about Daniel Murphy, the Mets player who missed two games because his wife was giving birth. This caps a year of increasing public attention on men as family caregivers, as described by Scott Behson, a scholar and writer on working fatherhood at 1 Million for Work Flexibility. An NBC correspondent weighed in on the TODAY show with
Take it from new dad Craig Melvin: Paternity leave conversation 'long overdue'. "While some contend government's role is already out-sized and even a modest few-cents-per-pay-period payroll tax would be too much, I would argue a modest investment that encourages fathers to start off on the right foot is a more than worthwhile investment, considering we all pick up the tab down the road when children whose fathers weren't there start growing up." Good point.
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