The National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) created ” Equal Pay Day” in 1996 as ” a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men’s and women’s wages” . The average woman has to work nearly 4 more months to earn the yearly salary of her male colleagues.
The day, observed on a Tuesday in April, symbolizes how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year. (Tuesday is the day on which women’s wages catch up to men’s wages from the previous week.) Because women earn less, on average, than men, they must work longer for the same amount of pay. The wage gap is even greater for most women of color.
