To combat gender and racial wage gaps, nearly a dozen states recently have enacted pay transparency laws that require employers to be more open about the wages and benefits they offer.
Most of the laws require employers to disclose wages in job postings and some bar them from asking a job candidate about their salary history.
“Even though it’s against the law, we definitely still see that women are being paid less than their male counterparts, even though they’re doing the same job,” said Jessica Ramey Stender, a lawyer and the policy director at Equal Rights Advocates, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that focuses on sexual harassment and pay discrimination, among other issues. “And that’s a problem.”
Under the federal Equal Pay Act of 1963, employers can’t pay different salaries “on the basis of sex” to employees who do “equal work.” States have similar protections. Nevertheless, women on average have been paid less than men as far back as federal data has been collected.