Last month, Senate Republicans blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that Democrats are pushing as part of their "Fair Shot" agenda for women. Now the National Women's Law Center has started a new project to explain exactly why legislation is needed.
Sarah Silverman is crowdfunding a project for the Law Center, trying to raise all the money owed to women for unequal pay. She explains:
Every year the average woman loses around $11,000 to the wage gap. Over the course of the working years of her life, that's almost 500 grand. That's a $500,000 vagina tax.
The Equal Payback Project, established by the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) to raise awareness and donations. The fundraising goal is $29,811,746,430,000—an intentionally ludicrous figure that highlights the reality of the wage gap between men and women. The number was calculated by multiplying the nearly 69 million working women by the $435,049 a typical woman loses to the wage gap over the course of her career (assuming she works full time for 40 years).
Also, this infographic below shows how much the gap varies from state to state, based upon the 2012 census, which found that, in places like Washington, DC and Vermont, women made more than 83% of what men earn, while states like Wyoming and Louisiana saw women making less than 69% of men's wages.