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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Equal Pay Day Sheds Light on Male-Female Pay Inequality

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Tuesday, April 9, 2013   

LANSING, Mich. - Activists will be at the state Capitol today to recognize Equal Pay Day and witness the introduction of bills supporters say would strengthen laws banning sex-based wage discrimination. Women earn about 77 cents for every dollar men earn in the same jobs.

Mary Pollack, director of Michigan NOW, said the state should act to close the gap.

"We need more action by corporations and government to employ women in nontraditional occupations," she said, "and to look at the wages - what they're paying - based on the skill effort, responsibility, working conditions and training required rather than the gender of the incumbent."

Women have made gains in pay equity since the Elliott-Larson Civil Rights Act was passed 50 years ago. However, Pollack said, pay discrimination still exists in the workplace.

"An American Association of University Women study indicates that there is a 5-percent pay differential, when you control for the major and school that people come out of, and everything else, between males and females for their first job," she said, "and that just continues on for their whole career."

Pay inequality has significant implications for families, Pollack noted, since women are increasingly their family's sole or primary source of income.

2013 is the 50th anniversary of the federal Equal Pay Act. In 1971, Michigan passed its own equal-pay amendment to the state's minimum wage act. According to federal data, women make 23 percent less than men who are working at the same job.







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