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Income Mississippi women make up 49 percent of the workforce in the state and 73 percent are co-breadwinners for their families. Whitney Lipscomb with the state attorney general’s office says a recent study found.
“Full-time working women in Mississippi earn approximately 27 percent less than full-time working men in Mississippi. On average a woman in Mississippi earns $10,000 less annually than her male counterpart,” Lipscomb said.
Lipscomb adds the wage gap for women of color is even greater. She’s among advocates appearing before the Senate Labor Committee at the State Capitol. Joining them is activist Lilly Ledbetter, a former supervisor who sued Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in the 1990’s for gender pay discrimination. She won $3.8 million but the case was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“That is why I travel the world today talking about unequal pay for equal work because if you lose it, it’s gone forever. You don’t have any way to get it back,” Ledbetter said.
The Mississippi Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports it won a case where a woman’s salary was $40,000 and the man’s was $80,000 for the same job. A representative says it's one of two cases they've won in 11 years, often women fear retribution if they complain.
Republican Senator Bart Williams of Starkville, is on the labor committee.
“I’m a father of two daughters and I think equal pay is something we need to legislate and make sure everybody’s compensated equally,” Williams said.
The chair, Democratic Senator John Horhn of Jackson, says the senate passed a bill two years ago but it failed in the House.
“We need to address this if indeed Mississippi is going to move forward and we’re going to lift ourselves off the bottom,” Horn said.
Horhn says last year, an equal pay bill passed out of the Senate Labor Committee and was sent two other committees where it stalled. He thinks it's likely the labor committee will put forth another equal pay bill in January.
President of the United Way of the Capital Area, Ira Murphy, cited a report done the agency did in August of this year called the Alice Project. Alice is an acronym for Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed. He says Alice are workers who often cannot afford the minimum cost of running a home each month. According to the report, the pandemic has made it more difficult for families to make ends meet.
Murphy says while half of Mississippi families fit this description including male headed households, the single largest group in the category, 83 percent, are single women with one or more children.
Advocates here hope the information they've provided will lead to an enforceable equal pay bill in Mississippi.
