Today is Blog for Equal Pay Day.

Women in the United States are still paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. And for women of color, the numbers are even worse. African-American women earn 63 cents and Latinas earn 52 cents for every dollar paid to white men.

What can we do about this situation? At Feministing it is explained that we should take a few minutes and ask our Senators to pass the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

But it goes beyond that.

This past week PalMD blogged about how some people think letting women go to medical school is a waste: “Now imagine you are sitting in the doctors’ lounge, and a senior physician says that sending women to medical school is a bit of a waste.”

And how might this affect those of us who aren’t interested in attending medical school anyway? PalMD continues:

“As a society and a profession, we have to decide to take the role of women seriously. If we demean women’s role in our profession, we may be more likely to demean our female patients and family members. ”

A good discussion follows in the comments.

Other good ways to start fixing this problem would be to make sure women are getting adequate science educations. According to the NSF’s Science and Engineering Indicators 2008 report we aren’t doing very well with that. Basic science questions were asked and women tended to do much worse than men.

Correct answers to basic scientific questions by percent:

The center of the Earth is very hot. (True)
Male 85
Female 75

Electrons are smaller than atoms. (True)
Male 61
Female 48

Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? (Earth around Sun)
Male 82
Female 71

How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun? Sun: one day, one month, or one year? (One year)
Male 66
Female 46

Why do women not do as well? Maybe older women didn’t have as many educational opportunities when they were young and then were less able to teach their daughters basic concepts like these. We can’t expect to be able to compete as well with men in the workplace if we don’t make sure that young women are learning even the most basic of information about the world around them.

There is a great discussion at The Intersection about Sheril R. Kirshenbaum’s post about this: Is Our Children Learning? (maybe not)

Other women writing about Equal Pay Day include:

Cecelia at Ojibway Migisi Bineshii
Veronica at Viva La Feminista
Lindsay at Female Impersonator
Jess at Pink Wave Feminism
Jill at Writes Like She Talks