Dear John,

Last week, Senate Republicans voted against equal pay and blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act on a party line vote. I first worked on Paycheck Fairness in 1999 when I started as a fellow here at the National Women's Law Center, and of course the fight for equal pay was happening long before I came. Now it’s 2021, and we are still fighting to end discriminatory race and gender wage gaps.

I’m pretty angry about the vote, but this is not the end of our push for equal pay.

Small-minded senators cannot be allowed to block economic justice for women. Now we must demand that President Biden and the administration do everything in their power to promote equal pay through executive action. Women can’t afford to wait any longer.

Women across the country have been robbed of hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime—with the biggest impacts on Black women, Latinas, and Native American women. And as we emerge from a global pandemic that has disproportionately hurt women workers, we need executive actions that advance racial and gender equity. President Biden must use his executive power to:

• Ensure that federal contractors don’t rely on job applicants’ salary history to set pay and that they provide salary ranges in job announcements.
• Strengthen enforcement of pay discrimination laws by requiring employers to collect and report compensation data by race, ethnicity and gender to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.
• Increase pay transparency by requiring federal contractors to publicly disclose race and gender wage gaps.

Tell President Biden to Support These Important Equal Pay Initiatives TODAY! 

While we know that these executive actions won't close the wage gap for everyone, they're still an important step in the fight for equal pay. We won't quit pushing those in power—in Congress, in the White House, in statehouses, and in boardrooms—to do all they can to achieve equal pay for all.

In solidarity,

Emily Martin
she/her/hers
Vice President of Education & Workplace Justice
National Women's Law Center