MADISON – Senator LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) offered the following weekly Democratic radio address today on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day.

The audio file can be found here.

A written transcript of the address is as follows:

“Hello. I’m State Senator LaTonya Johnson. On August 7, we observed Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. Women on average earn 80 cents for every $1 paid to men and for this reason we hold Equal Pay Day in April. In other words, equal pay for equal work. But did you know for women of color the pay gap is even wider? In Wisconsin, African American women earn only 61 cents for every dollar paid to men, which made August 7 of this year the day that their salaries caught up to what white men made in 2017.

“Senate Democrats are committed to ensuring women, including women of color, are paid fair wages for equal work and addressing contributors to the wage gap, such as employment discrimination and lack of affordable child care.

“According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research, if women were paid the same as comparable men then the economy would add $513 billion in wages and salary, and the poverty rate for working women would fall by nearly half. Closing the wage gap is not only an issue of fairness, but it’s an economic imperative that benefits everyone in our community.”