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As Friday marked the one year anniversary of President Obama’s signing into law of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, new legislation aimed at closing the gender wage gap is before the Senate. Last year’s milestone allowed for the restoration of a worker’s right to challenge wage discrimination in court. However, as testimony for the Paycheck Fairness Act has noted, wage inequalities between the sexes could cost a woman worker as much as $700,000 to $2 million dollars over the course of her career. On average, women continue to make only 77 cents on the dollar of their male counterparts with women of color suffering from worse disparities. Seeking to be a corrective, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which passed the House of Representatives last year and is now before the Senate, will take numerous measures against such discrimination. It proposes to update the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and will require employers to be able to account for pay differentials on grounds besides a worker’s sex. The legislation also has an enforcement mechanism that will strengthen penalties for those guilty of equal pay violations. Another important aspect of the Paycheck Fairness Act is its prohibition on an employers ability to retaliate against workers who inquire about or disclose their pay scales to another. Lily Ledbetter, the woman for whom last year’s landmark legislation was named has said in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act that, “It is time to improve the law, not just restore it.”

GUEST: Deborah Vagins, Legislative Council for the American Civil Liberties Union

Visit www.aclu.org for more information.