Equal Pay Day: Wage Gap Still Exists In 2017

Today is Equal Pay Day, a day that marks the wage discrepancies that exist between men and women in the workforce. It was started in 1996 by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) to highlight the gap between men and women’s wages.

It’s 2017, 21 years after the establishment of Equal Pay Day, and women are still paid an average of 20% less than their male counterparts.

People Commemorate Equal Pay Day 2017

First daughter Ivanka Trump took part in the commemoration by posting an equal pay statistics graphic to her Instagram. The visual read: “Women earn 82% the all time weekly paycheck of a man. Black women earn 68% and Latina women earn 62% of the full-time weekly pay of a white man.”

Today, on #EqualPayDay, we are reminded that women deserve equal pay for equal work. Closing the gender pay gap is critical to the economic empowerment of American women, and it is the responsibility of all Americans to come together in pursuit of equal pay. I am proud to work towards this goal alongside my father and in support of the administration’s commitment to women and families.

A post shared by Ivanka Trump (@ivankatrump) on Apr 4, 2017 at 4:38am PDT

The first daughter is now a White House advisor with her own West Wing office, and has fully embraced women’s empowerment.

“When we think about equal pay and the challenge we have to finally level the playing field, I think this will be a very important component when we think about the future,” Ivanka said at a White House-organized town hall on Tuesday.

Equal Pay day is held every April to symbolize how far into the year women need to work to make what men made in the previous year. The significance of holding it on a Tuesday is to “represent how far into the next work week women must work to earn what men earned the previous week.” Because women earn less on average, they must work longer for the same pay.

People have been participating in this message all over social media, with particular activity on Twitter. Below are some noteworthy tweets: