National Equal Pay Day, 2012

Proclamation 8800 of April 17, 2012

National Equal Pay Day, 2012

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

Working women power America's economy and sustain our
middle class. For millions of families across our
country, women's wages mean food on the table, decent
medical care, and timely mortgage payments. Yet, in
2010--47 years after President John F. Kennedy signed
the Equal Pay Act of 1963--women who worked full-time
earned only 77 percent of what their male counterparts
did. The pay gap was even greater for African American
and Latina women, with African American women earning
64 cents and Latina women earning 56 cents for every
dollar earned by a Caucasian man. National Equal Pay
Day represents the date in the current year through
which women must work to match what men earned in the
previous year, reminding us that we must keep striving
for an America where everyone gets an equal day's pay
for an equal day's work.

At a time when families across our country are
struggling to make ends meet, ensuring a fair wage for
all parents is more important than ever. Women are
breadwinners in a growing number of families, and
women's earnings play an increasingly important role in
families' incomes. For them, fair pay is even more than
a basic right--it is an economic necessity.

That is why my Administration is committed to securing
equal pay for equal work. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay
Act, the first bill I signed as President, empowers
women to recover wages lost to discrimination by
extending the time period in which an employee can file
a claim. In 2010, I was proud to create the National
Equal Pay Task Force to identify and combat equal pay
violations. The Task Force has helped women recover
millions in lost wages, built collaborative training
programs that educate employees about their rights and
inform employers of their obligations, and facilitated
an unprecedented level of inter-agency coordination to
improve enforcement of equal pay laws.

Working women are at the heart of an America built to
last. Equal pay will strengthen our families, grow our
economy, and enable the best ideas and boldest
innovations to flourish--regardless of the innovator's
gender. On National Equal Pay Day, let us resolve to
become a Nation that values the contributions of our
daughters as much as those of our sons, denies them no
opportunity, and sets no limits on their dreams.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority
vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the
United States, do hereby proclaim April 17, 2012, as
National Equal Pay Day. I call upon all Americans to
recognize the full value of women's skills and their
significant contributions to the labor force,
acknowledge the injustice of wage discrimination, and
join efforts to achieve equal pay.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
seventeenth day of April, in the year of our Lord two
thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United
States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.