Nominations are being accepted through July 31 for the 2012 Edna, a $10,000 award from the Berger-Marks Foundation that will go to a young woman leader in the social justice movement. Young women making a mark in labor, women’s and other social justice movements are eligible for the award, which will be presented in the fall.

The majority of those paid the minimum wage are women: In 2011, more than 62 percent of minimum wage workers were women, compared with only 38 percent of male minimum wage workers, according to a new report by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

It’s especially bad that women make up the majority of minimum wage earners because women are paid 77 cents for every dollar a typical man earns. Women of color are far more likely to hold low-wage jobs than men, and two-thirds of mothers now are either the breadwinners or co-breadwinners for their families.

Our sisters at the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) want to get the word out about a new online women’s health community just launched by the non-profit group Healthy Women that CLUW has partnered with on many projects. CLUW President Karen See says the new online community offers:

a safe health haven for women and a place where women can ask health questions, get answers and share their own experiences with other women, as well as with health care experts.

Today, International Women’s Day 2012, marks a disappointing statistic: Worldwide, women are paid 18 percent on average less than their male counterparts at work. This startling fact comes from a new report released yesterday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

If you’re frustrated about the wage gap that persists between male and female workers, you can channel your energy into a new contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor and President Obama’s National Equal Pay Task Force.

AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer sends us this report.

Members from the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 2, friends and family came together in South St. Louis in recent days to give the “Women in Transition” organization a much needed makeover.

Emmelle Israel, AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, sends us this.

At the current rate, pay equity between men and women won’t occur for another 45 years, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).

Mike Gillis, Ohio AFL-CIO communications director, writes about a panel in Ohio earlier today in which participants agreed that women will be hard-hit by the state’s newly passed bill (S.B. 5) that takes collective bargaining rights away from public employees—and why voters need to go to the polls Nov. 8 to vote NO on Issue 2, to kill the bill.

The improved jobs figures out last Friday obscured the ongoing decline in public-sector jobs. As the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics noted when releasing the March unemployment data:

Employment in local government continued to trend down over the month. Local government has lost 416,000 jobs since an employment peak in September 2008.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire March 25, President Obama issued a proclamation in honor of this day and is calling on ”all Americans to participate in ceremonies and activities in memory of those who have been killed due to unsafe working conditions.” The president recognized the nation’s continued need for  job saftey and collective bargaining a century after the disaster that killed 146 young, mostly immigrant women.