(WOMENSENEWS)– To mark Equal Pay Day, taking place today, April 14, Helen Malhotra asked her high school classmates their thoughts on the gender pay gap.
For every dollar a man earns in the United States, a woman earns roughly 77 cents, according to the White House, and the gap is even wider for African American women and Latinas. April 14 is how far into the year the average American woman must work to earn what the average American man earned the previous year.
Malhotra discovered her classmates were aware of this fact and that they felt it was unfair. “My main takeaway from making the video was that the majority of students in D.C. are aware of the 77 cents to a dollar issue and are concerned about it,” Malhotra said in an email interview. “I think it is really impressive and important that this is something that is brought up and talked about in class.”
Besides their concern, some of Malhotra’s schoolmates also offered suggestions for how to fix this problem. “It’s up to people to start early and build the idea that men and women are equal,” said David Fadul in the video. “So that when those kids that were taught that men and women were equal grow up to be CEOs and bosses, they apply what they learned as kids [about] equality to their employees.”
