Today is Equal Pay Day, and groups representing working women from around the country are talking about the importance of closing the pay gap, once and for all. 

The National Women's Law Center is hosting a blogger carnival on Equal Pay Day. See the full list of blogs here. 

In 2012, the pay gap between women’s and men’s median weekly full-time earnings increased from 2011, reported the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) in new analysis. 

Four years ago today President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, with Lilly Ledbetter, who suffered 20 years of pay discrimination while doing the same work as men at her Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. factory, looking on.

Now, she is urging people to call on Congress to pass the recently reintroduced Paycheck Fairness Act, calling it “the next step.”

This is a cross-post from MomsRising.org and the Labor Project for Working Families.

When Annie Bolgiano was growing up, her mother, a forest firefighter, told her daughter she could become anything she wanted. Then Annie went to college and learned another lesson:

You can go into whatever profession you want, but you are statistically unlikely to make a salary equal to your male counterparts.

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).

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).