October 7, 2016

Dear future president,

Congrats to you on your big win. The reason I’m writing this is because, I think gender and race equality is very important, and that women of all races should get paid as much as men. Gender equality is still an ongoing issue that should get more attention, and is sometimes thought of as an unimportant topic. More and more women are starting to take on the jobs that are usually filled by men. Now male dominant jobs are becoming more diverse with women taking on those jobs. Examples would be, craft, operator, and laborer jobs.

In 2015, the AAUW had stated in the “Economic Justice” article, that women working full time in the United States were paid 80% of what men were paid. That's a 20% pay gap. The pay gap was also calculated for each state in the U.S. New York had reported the smallest pay gap , while Wyoming had reported the largest with a 40% gap. That means women only earned about 60% of what men earned. That's incredibly low compared to other states.

In addition, the AAUW uses two different data sources for earnings ratios by race and ethnicity. They use CPS (Current Population Survey) and ACS (American community survey). Women of different backgrounds and races, all have different sized earnings. Some being drastically low compared to others. Asian women had the smallest pay gap, with them earning 85% of what men earning. While African American women had the third smallest gap, with 63% of what men were earning. The highest gap was for Hispanic or Latina women with only 54% of men's earnings.

In relation to that, the AAUW stated that earnings increase with age for both male and female, but that means the gender pay gap also grows with age. Women after the age of 35 tend to have higher pay gaps. Education is a key part, but it is not an effective pay gap solution. In some situations the gender pay gap is larger at higher levels of education.

As the next president, I want you to encourage and inform people about groups like NCEP (National Committee on Pay Equity) who support equal pay. I also want you to enforce the EPA (Equal Pay Act), that is also a federal law. If you do decide to carry this suggestion out it would be very much appreciated. I wish you luck on your terms and hope everything goes according to plan.

Sincerely,

B’elanna