Zonta Club of Santa Clarita Valley Improving the Lives of Women through Service, Advocacy and Awareness – May 2018

 Zonta International has Consultative Status as a Non-Governmental Organization with UN Women and is invited to participate in the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meeting in New York in March each year.
UN Women is the global champion for gender equality, working to develop and uphold standards and create an environment in which every woman and girl can exercise human rights and live up to her full potential. Its main roles are to support the inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) which is the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.
The Zonta Club of Santa Clarita Valley is honored to be a part of the global effort through UN Women and CSW to promote gender equality, empower women and create an environment for women and girls to exercise their human rights.
CSW 2017 committed to the implementation of equal pay policies through social dialogue, collective bargaining, job evaluations and gender pay audits, among other measures. The following provides a review of “Equal Pay Day” 2017-2018.
April 10, 2018 signified “Equal Pay Day”, a symbolic date which occurs on a Tuesday in April and represents how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. The gender pay gap has grown worse nationally, especially for young professionals. The symbolic “Equal Pay Day” 2017 occurred on April 4th – analysis reveals six more days of work for “equal” pay during the past year.
California reduced the gap currently at 12 cents, which means that women are paid 88 cents for every dollar paid to men – this places California in second place behind top ranked New York with a current gap of 11 cents. In 2017, California was ranked seventh in the nation with a gap of 14 cents; the figures for pay gap have shrunk for California working women over the past year. #BeBoldForChange showed improvement in our state, but there is still work to do!
“Nationally, the median annual pay for a woman who holds a full-time, year-round job is $41,554 while the median annual pay for a man who holds a full-time, year-round job is $51,640,” writes non-profit advocacy group The National Partnership for Women & Families. Researchers have studied why the pay gap exists and they suspect multiple factors, including unequal hiring for gender in the top paying industries (for instance, women only occupy 1/5th of the top-paid Science, Technology, Engineering and Math [STEM]) jobs, and sexism in salary negotiations; others speculate that the pay gap is actually a penalty against motherhood. The wage gap is even greater for most women of color.
Each of us – women and men joining forces – can be a leader within our own spheres of influence by taking bold pragmatic action to accelerate gender parity. Through purposeful collaboration, we can help women advance and unleash their limitless potential offered to economies the world over.
For information about Zonta, call Phyllis Walker at 661-251-1172.