by Jessica Lauredan, Outreach Intern
National Women’s Law Center
In a few short weeks, I will be taking a proud walk across the stage to receive my hard- earned college diploma. Despite the regret that my exam-taking, paper-writing, dorm-living days are over, the most disheartening fact about entering the “real world” is that the young men who graduate along side me could earn significantly more than I do, just because of their sex.
Although it has been outlawed for over 40 years, the average full-time working woman still earns 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. As a recent grad, the 80 percent of a man’s salary that I can expect to earn will shrink to a disconcerting 69 percent in just 10 years. In other words, the gap only widens from here.
Now I’m no math major, but all graduates put a 100 percent investment into their college education; yet female students get only get a fraction of the return? Hmm... that just doesn’t seem to add up.
This income gap means a lifetime of lost earnings and unrealized possibilities for millions of women like me — a smaller house, missed vacations, a could-have-been new car, or maybe a non-existent retirement fund. In a country that values self-sufficiency and hard work, where are the rewards for women who demonstrate just that? It’s time America realizes what the wage gap means for all the hard-working women who continue to get short-changed.
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