May 5, 2016
The addition of the women — Harriet Tubman and other suffragists and civil rights heroines to the $10 and $5 bills — is a positive step. But it won’t count for much, not in most women’s wallets.
According to a report released in April by the Joint Economic Committee, based on median annual earnings, a woman working full time, year-round, will lose nearly $500,000 over a career because of gender pay gaps.
That’s $10,800 less per year than a man.
Pay gaps like this aren’t going to be fixed easily and certainly not by stamping a few women’s faces on a U.S. sawbuck. And at the current rate of change, cites the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, the gender pay gap will not close until 2059.
