The 19th: “Tuesday March 15, 2022 was Equal Pay Day, the first in a series of reminders of how persistent the pay gap has been. More states and cities hope laws requiring employers to share pay minimums and maximums on job postings will shrink this gap.  After years of little progress toward pay equity, more and more states and localities are passing pay transparency laws that eliminate the secrecy around salaries and could be a powerful tool for eliminating the gender pay gap.  Tuesday’s Equal Pay Day is the first in a series of days across the year that highlights how little progress the country has made toward closing the gender pay gap. Pay transparency – requiring employers to share pay minimums and maximums for job postings — is considered an effective mechanism to close that wide, persistent gap, and some of the most far-reaching legislation has come in recent months, with bills taking effect in Colorado and passing in New York City.  Advocates believe pay transparency laws, and the framework of the new bills, could drive a push for federal legislation and amass enough data to create the first databases of gender pay disparities in the United States, which would give workers more negotiating power when applying for jobs…Pay transparency laws are still a fairly new phenomenon – the first bills passed in 2018 and were far more limited – so there is limited data on their effectiveness in the United States. Recent data from Canada on its public-sector salary disclosure law found that the law reduced the pay gap between men and women at Canadian universities by about 20 to 40 percent, according to a report from the U.S. Treasury Department released this month…”

• See also Washington Post: “Equal Pay Day falls earlier this year. Here’s what to know. March 15 marks how far into the new year the average woman must work to match what the average man made the year before…”
• See also Fast Company – Equal Pay Day 2022: The gender pay gap may get bigger as women return to work after COVID “The gap has narrowed by 2 cents since 2015, but it may get larger as women were disproportionately impacted by pandemic job losses.”
• See also Smithsonian Magazine – Using Data Science to Uncover the Work of Women in Science. Scientists’ personal papers often offer key insights into a scientist’s goals and character. Without them, digital curator Dr. Elizabeth Harmon must act as a detective.