Happy Equal Pay Day

McLean County's first observance of Equal Pay Day highlights the $.23 an hour difference between what men and women get paid. The Keynote speaker at the event held at the YWCA is Diane Zosky, director of the School of Social Work at Illinois State University. She says employers can get away with paying women less in large part because of a national culture of secrecy surrounding pay. Zosky says the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is looking into a proposal to change that. "Employers of 20 people or more will need to annually report their salaries by gender. And this could actually go a long way, that maybe we could close this gap before 2015 because one of the big issues is we just don't know what other people are getting paid." Zosky says even when a pay discrepancy is discovered, it's a very difficult thing for many women to confront a boss and demand equal pay. Equal Pay Day marks how far into the year women work to earn what men made in the previous year.