The second United States memorial dedicated specifically to women was made official on this year’s Equal Pay Day on Tuesday.
The Atlantic reports the site is the newly renamed Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument. It is named for Alva Belmont and Alice Paul, who both founded the National Women’s Party and spearheaded the fight for suffrage in the early 20th century.
The memorial is a very nice gesture towards gender equality, and it doubles the amount of memorials devoted to women. No disrespect towards that progress, it’s definitely what I would call pretty sweet.
What’s troubling is this memorial came on Equal Pay Day when the real prize we need — deserve — is actual equal pay.
As of 2015, according to CNN Money, white women on average earned 70 to 83 cents to a dollar a man makes, while black and Latino women make even less — 64 and 56 cents, respectively, to every dollar.
A common argument regarding the pay gap is it only occurs because men and women often occupy very different jobs.
Despite that being a problem in and of itself — we should be encouraging and educating women to enter the same jobs as men — it’s also not the most valid point.
CNN Money also found that even within the same occupation, such as teaching, men earn more than women for equal work.
Another argument is women make less money because they have to stay home from work to care for children.
Again, this is problematic on principle. This issue could be eradicated by a more progressive, nationwide paid family-leave plan, as well as a mental shift on the idea that women are solely responsible for house making and child raising.
These are not easy fixes, as they require a change in the entire way we think about gender and family structure, but we have already made slow and steady progress towards the shift, and hopefully this trend will continue.
The benefits of equal pay for equal work for all genders—regardless of their race — far outweigh the drawbacks.
A second historical site dedicated to women is a good move forward in terms of female representation, but it seems like a diversion from the real reason we have Equal Pay Day.
The day is supposed to be a statement of how long it would take a woman to accumulate the wages that a man does in a year — it would take her the span of that year as well as Jan. 1 through April 12.
That deserves a little more than a memorial to women’s suffrage, it calls for some serious wage reform.
meickhof@indiana.edu
@maggie_eickhoff
