Pay Day

No, I didn't get paid today. That won't happen for another week and a half, and that paycheck is already spoken for. They all are, these days.

Today is actually National Equal Pay Day. The write up I have about it says, "This day symbolizes the day when an average American woman's earnings finally match what an average American man earned in the past year." (emphasis added). Yeah. It's a SYMBOL of me making the same as my cube-mate. Because it may or may not actually be happening in cubes across America. How strange.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't happening at my last job. Not that I'll complain too much. The 1 time I asked for a substantial raise, I got it. The 1 time I asked for another day of vacation, however, not so much. My last job wasn't as concerned with equal pay as they were with equal vacation days.

But as a product of a single, working mother, I'm a little put out about the fact that she likely wouldn't have made as much as her male counterparts had she worked in the private sector. I also have 3 sisters who are the sole (or majority) breadwinners for their families. We're doing our part to "reshape attitudes" about working women. Looking broader, what about the "mancession" that we're climbing out of? Were companies firing the higher wage-earners in an attempt to cut costs where they could or was it soley because the industries hardest hit were male dominated? What does that mean for families who now have to rely on mom's income to get by until dad can find another job? Wouldn't it be great if mom earned market rate for her job? Or maybe we should adjust market rate for men down to woman-levels.

Or maybe I don't really care about this as much as this blog leads you to believe. The word, "symbolizes" just caught my attention.