Unequal pay isn’t just unfair, it’s illegal.

After President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act nearly 50 years ago, on average women are still paid less than their male counterparts for doing comparable jobs in the U.S. — that’s called the pay gap. It means that each time the average woman starts a new job, she’s likely to start from a lower base salary than her male counterparts.

Just as interest compounds, so does the pay gap. As a woman moves from job to job during her career, the pay gap between her and her male colleagues is likely to become wider and wider.

Personal financial advisors and legal occupations suffer the largest gender pay gaps. Personal and home care aides and special education teachers have the smallest pay gaps.

Unequal pay isn’t just unfair, it’s illegal. But unless men and women who have the same job discuss what they’re getting paid, unequal pay can go unaddressed indefinitely.

Narrow the Gap

Insist on equal pay for equal work in your and your loved ones’ workplaces. Here’s what you can do.

• Get educated about Equal Pay and Compensation Discrimination.
• Raise awareness about the pay gap. To start, tweet, like, share, +1, and blog a page from this site.
• Talk to employees and employers you know about the pay gap, salary negotiation techniques, and equal pay laws.

Hack on It

If we cite the numbers, we can change the numbers. Boatloads of data just like this is freely available from the U.S. Department of Labor and beyond.

Developers, make an app which uses the data to help job seekers and employers narrow the pay gap.

Submit your world-changing creation to the Equal Pay App Challenge between now and March 31st, 2012.

Via Narrow the Gapp