Pete Buttigieg on equal pay

Today is Equal Pay Day -- a day to acknowledge that on average, a woman had to work all of 2018 and this far into 2019 to earn what a man earned in 2018.

American women earn 20% less than men. On average, Black women are paid 61 cents, and Latinas 53 cents, for every dollar a white man earns. On top of that, women who choose to have a child lose 30% of their earnings permanently.

To all the women not being paid fairly, or who even have to wonder if they’re being paid fairly: I believe you deserve better. There are many things we need to do to make sure women have the same freedoms that men do. I‘d like to propose a new law mandating gender pay transparency.

For every large company, the US should publicly disclose a simple annual gender pay gap score: for every dollar the company paid to men, how much less did it pay to women?

We wouldn’t be the first to do this. The UK government instituted gender pay transparency in 2017.

This type of transparency encourages companies to do better by hiring, promoting, and retaining women and raising their pay. It allows workers to know which employers have glass ceilings and which ones are more equitable.

This isn't just about gender pay gaps within jobs. It's about supporting women along the entire career ladder.

  Pete Buttigieg email