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Tuesday is Equal Pay Day
Trump said closing wage gap is "critical to the economic empowerment" of women
It’s 2017, and women are on average paid 20% less than men, wage reports say.
First daughter Ivanka Trump posted an Instagram graphic from USA Today with equal pay statistics that read: “Women earn 82% the all time weekly paycheck of a man. Black women earn 68% and Latina women earn 62% of the full-time weekly pay of a white man.”
“Today, on #EqualPayDay, we are reminded that women deserve equal pay for equal work,” Trump wrote on Instagram Tuesday morning.
April 4 was dubbed “Equal Pay Day” in 1996 by the National Committee on Pay Equity to raise awareness on the wage gap between women and men. The date “symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year,” the group had said.
The first daughter, now officially a White House adviser with a West Wing office, has embraced women’s empowerment as a signature issue.
“When we think about equal pay and the challenge we have to finally level the playing field, I think this will be a very important component when we think about the future,” she told CEOs at a White House-organized town hall on American business in Washington Tuesday.
Chelsea Clinton took a more political approach to the issue of equal pay, criticizing the Trump administration.
“3 years ago, Obama introduced more protections for women in the workplace. Last week Trump removed them #EqualPayDay,” Clinton tweeted, linking to an NBC News story about President Donald Trump revoking President Barack Obama’s Fair Play and Safe Workplaces executive order.
Hillary Clinton’s Twitter account also commemorated Equal Pay Day, linking to a Marie Claire article on a partnership between Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In organization and local businesses to offer discounts on Tuesday.
Before the day even began, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi weighed in.
“Just a few more hours until #EqualPayDay – marking how long women must work to achieve the pay men received the previous year,” she tweeted Monday evening.