“Woman must have a purse of her own.” Susan B. Anthony, 1853 #EqualPayDay
In 1852, Susan B. Anthony toured New York setting up local women’s temperance societies in several towns. A year later, she was dismayed to find that they had all closed due to lack of funding. “It matters not how overflowing with benevolence towards suffering humanity may be the heart of women, it avails nothing so long as she possesses not power to act in accordance with those promptings,” she realized. “Woman must have a purse of her own.”
At the time, Susan reported that woman were paid only a third of the salaries of men for the same work. Modern women, on average, are paid 82 cents to a male dollar (even less for women of color). We have come a long way, but every year we remember how much further we must go on Equal Pay Day, the day representing the number of extra days the average woman must work to match a male salary. This year, Equal Pay Day falls on March 31.
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