Equal Pay Day sale sparks thinking on job equality
The YWCA sold brownies at a discount to women on Tuesday, to make the point that women make less than men for the same job
/ Photojournalist Tom Eschen
At the YWCA's newstand in downtown Syracuse's University Building, they were selling brownies on Monday, but with a twist: if you were a man you could buy for $1, but women got a 23-cent discount.
Monday was Equal Pay Day, the day the Federal Government points out that there's still inequality between the sexes, for the same job. Why April 17th? Because the US Labor Department estimates that if a man and a woman started the same job at the beginning of last year, it would take the woman this much of this year to make the same salary as the man makes in the calendar year---in other words, women make just 77% of a man's salary in most jobs.
The Federal Government has put out lots of brochures and reports to mark the day, while the YMCA of Syracuse and Onondaga County chose to do the unequal price for brownies comparison. "I've heard women say when they finally understand what 23 cents is, that they're finally coming around to saying that's not fair," says the YWCA's Sherry Dewey-Hawuczyk.
Some of the women buying brownies were paying a dollar for the ones being bought for men, the discounted rate for themselves. We also saw one man send his assistant over to buy, knowing she would get the discount for all. But the YWCA people say that overal they got so many people thinking about pay inequality, they'll try the outreach again, to convince people about equal work for equal pay, one brownie at a time.
