Everything's Bigger in Rick Perry's Texas, Except a Woman's Right to Equal Pay

Today is Women's Equality Day. The day is a celebration of the passage of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote. The 19th Amendment became law in 1920. Almost 100 years later women are still fighting to be treated equally.

It was 1963, when I was only 6 years old, that the Equal Pay Act became the law. At the time women made 59 cents for ever dollar a man made. In the following fifty years that gender gap has only increased 18 cents, to 77 cents. That means that we have moved at a rate of about 1 cent per every 2 ½ years towards gender equality in pay. It also means that women in America, working in the same job as a man, doing the same quality of work as a man, work until April 9th for free. On average, women earn $10,000 less per year than men. Over a life-time that mean that a woman with a high school diploma will earn $700,000 less than a man with a high school degree. Woman who graduate from college will earn less than men with a college degree by over One Million Dollars, and Professional Women will earn less than a similarly educated man by roughly 2 Million Dollars.

The State of Texas is one of the bright hopes for the economy in America. Texas ranks second in the country for economic growth, at 4.8 percent. Texas GDP growth from 2009 to 2012 was 13 percent. Texas job creation is far ahead of the national average. Since 1995 the nation job growth has been 12% but Texas has been an impressive 31.5 percent. Even more impressive is the increase of high paying jobs in Texas. Texas has only 8 percent of the U.S. population but created 33 percent of the country's highest paying jobs, while the rest of the country lost 174,000 jobs in that category. Additionally the number of people moving to Texas is breathtaking. Houston has become the country's fifth largest metroplex, and the Dallas-Ft.Worth Metroplex was already the fourth-largest. For the first time since keeping records, two of the top five cities in population in the country lay within the borders of a single state. Add to that the fact that Austin ranked as the fastest growing city with more than 1 million residents.

Given this incredible rate of growth, it would be logical to conclude that Texas leads the country in favorable treatment of women in the work force. Women currently make up 46.9 percent of the work force, and hold 51.5 percent of the management, professional and related positions in America.

Yet women are still underpaid in Texas relative to their male counterparts. The wage gap in Texas in 18.2 percent.

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