Shusterman rallies for equal pay in Harrisburg
Rep. Jennifer M. O'Mara March 17, 2025 | 1:13 PM
HARRISBURG, March 17 – State Rep. Melissa Shusterman, D-Chester, along with fellow legislators and stakeholders, led the call for equal pay at a Capitol news conference today.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, in 2023, women in Pennsylvania were paid an average of 80.9% of what men were paid. This trails behind the national average and five out of six of Pennsylvania’s neighboring states.
The pay gap leads to less income for women to support their families. It also means women experience higher rates of poverty, lower financial earnings over a lifetime, and less money saved for retirement than their male colleagues. If Pennsylvania’s women were given equal pay for equal work, it is projected that the number of working women and single mothers living in poverty in the Commonwealth could be reduced by nearly 40%.
“Creating equal pay means increasing economic gains in the Commonwealth,” said Shusterman. “That is a commonsense win for everyone but most importantly, for women and their families. When you get paid less, that means less money for household expenses, retirement, or children’s clothing and food.”
“There are 3 million women in the workforce in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said Pa. Speaker of the House, Rep. Joanna McClinton. “How many of these women are being underpaid? How many of these women have no recourse at their job in order to discover what they should even be asking for at a certain workplace? I am so grateful for my colleague Representative Melissa Shusterman, who is leading the way to ensure that by next Women’s History Month, that not only is this bill out of the House and out of the state Senate, but it is also on Governor Shapiro’s desk.”
“The reality is that for working mothers, a hard day's work doesn't guarantee a fair day's pay. The gender wage gap, where mothers earn just 73 cents to a father's dollar, isn't just a women's issue – it's a family issue,” said state Rep. Jennifer O’Mara, D-Delaware. “Couple this pay discrepancy with soaring child care costs; this robs women of economic opportunity and forces them into difficult choices between their career and caregiving.”
“The wage gap means less money for families to spend on children, invest in a mortgage, and save for emergencies and retirement,” said Annmarie Pinarski, staff attorney with the Women’s Law Project. “Pay discrimination makes all of these problems worse and contributes to the wage gap, which incidentally, just widened for the first time in 20 years. Lawmakers who refuse to support equal pay for equal work are demanding that Pennsylvanians climb out of quicksand.”
To combat the gender pay gap, Shusterman is introducing H.B. 630. This legislation would prohibit employers from paying workers less because of their gender, race or ethnicity and protect employees from retaliation in any wage discrimination matters. Additionally, the bill would curtail the practice by prospective employers of using salary history in pay-setting decisions for new employment, as this has been shown to negatively affect pay as workers move from job to job.