Tomorrow is Equal Pay Day, a public awareness event to draw attention to the gender pay gap. Today, women make about 80 cents per every dollar a man makes.

It’s ridiculous – if we do the same work, we should get paid the same. Am I right!? [Crowd cheers.]

But I’m here to say that we not only deserve equal pay, but should actually be making more money than men. Here are 5 very real reasons why:

1. Women are biologically superior to men. We have a longer life expectancy, more grey matter in our brains (it’s useful stuff, trust me) and can have multiple orgasms. We aren’t as susceptible to many inherited diseases (like hemophilia and colorblindness) because we have two X chromosomes rather than just one.

2. We work twice as much. Most women and men work eight-hour days. But when women get home, they have to cook, clean, and take care of the kids. This extra work is known by feminists as the “second shift” and we deserve to be compensated for it.

3. Women are more qualified than man. Women get better grades and take more advanced placement classes in high school. Nearly sixty-percent of undergraduate college students are women, and women earn more bachelor and graduate degrees then men. Read More »

Although you probably do not know who Lilly Ledbetter is (I didn’t know until this past week), you should thank her.

For the last ten years of her life, Ledbetter has fought for equal pay rights in the work place for women. After experiencing pay-based discrimination because of her sex (and learning about it through anonymous letters in her work mailbox), Ledbetter filed a complaint of gender discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Making a long story short (however, you should read the whole story over at CNN), President Obama stepped in and signed the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Restoration Act this past week making the fight for women’s rights and equality better upheld through the law.

While I feel gratitude for Ledbetter’s ongoing battle with the Supreme Court and Congress to pass this act that will give women the rights they warrant and money that is rightfully theirs, I know that work is still left to be done.

It may seem hard to believe, but to this day, full-time working women get paid “on average, only 77 cents for each dollar full-time working men get paid,” according to the Wage Project. This happens in every occupation across the nation, and while it impacts women in different ways, the reality of it is that hardworking women with outstanding college degrees lose money in their pockets simply because of their sex.

Think about it. Imagine working at the same place, doing the same job as a man (who has the same degree and amount of experience as you), putting in the same hours, only to find out he is, in fact, making more money than you on an annual basis. How is that fair? It’s not, at all.

But it is reality. Read More »