The Dominion Post, Yahoo News – Wednesday was National Equal Pay Day and a group of legislators and other equal pay advocates held a virtual meeting to promote four bills aimed at ensuring fair pay for women and minorities in West Virginia. Read the full article.
Three of the bills are called the Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan Fair Pay Act and one is called the Pay Transparency Act. Sponsorship is bipartisan. Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughn, African-American West Virginians, were both highlighted in the movie Hidden Figures for overcoming barriers to play key roles in NASA’s space program.
Kelly Allen, executive director of West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy opened the meeting and explained what the day is about. Due to the gender pay gap, this marks the extra days a woman must work in order to earn the same pay a man in a comparable job made the prior year — in other words it would take a woman almost 15 months to earn what her colleague would in 12.