National Pay Equity Day is right around the corner! This year it will be held on April 20, 2010. The date is symbolic of how long women must work into the next year to earn what men made in 2009. It seems unbelievable that in 2010 women, generally, only earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. A lot of progress has been made since the passage of the Equal Pay Act some 46 years ago, including the fairly recent passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. However, we have not yet achieved pay equity and there remains much work to be done.

There are a lot of activities out there to help you commemorate the day including Blogging for Fair Pay and wearing red to symbolize how far women are "in the red" with their pay. In Connecticut, the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women has created something unique. We designed a mock invoice to represent the amount of money owed to women because of pay inequity. We officially released it today and have sent it out to thousands of people in Connecticut and beyond. While the invoice is intended to be slightly humorous, the issue at hand is anything but.

Help get the word out about the impact the pay gap has not only on women but also on our families. Send this link to your friends/family/coworkers, tweet it and facebook it too!

For more information about the PCSW and to see what else we have planned please visit our website: www.cga.ct.gov/pcsw.

Michelle Noehren is the Legislative Liaison and Events Coordinator for the Connecticut General Assembly’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women.