Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--And What to Do About It

Are you (or a woman you love) being cheated out of 33 percent of your earnings? If you're a woman, over your working lifetime you will lose between $700,000 and $2 million -- simply because of your sex. Is that fair? No. Can it be stopped? Absolutely. The wage gap is a steady drain on the daily lives of women and our families. Rarely do we step back and add up what's missing -- better medical treatment, child care, housing, food, or retirement savings that women could have afforded if they were paid as well as men. Getting Even exposes the discrepancy between what women and men make -- and how it affects us all. It reveals that the wage gap is not going away on its own. And it explains how to close the wage gap -- and, finally, get women even. In this intelligently argued and startling book, Evelyn Murphy, Ph.D., humanizes the numbers through real-life stories and a wealth of data that has never before been examined. She shows how the wage gap pinches the daily lives of families throughout the country, at every economic level and in every industry. And she explains why, even though women have more opportunities than their mothers did, the wage gap persists: The American workplace still harbors an astonishing amount of discrimination, including blatant as well as complex hidden barriers, unspoken assumptions, unexamined attitudes, and habitual ways of behaving. But Murphy also brings good news: The wage gap can be closed. Having served as an economist, politician, public official, and corporate officer, she has a 360-degree view of the problem -- and of the solution. In a book that will explode into public debate, Murphy issues the indictment, rouses us to action -- and tells us exactly how to get even.

About the Author :
Evelyn Murphy was the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts from 1987 to 1991. She was the first woman in the state's history to hold statewide office. She has been an executive vice president of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Massachusetts and is a corporate director of SBLI USA Mutual Life Insurance Bank of America. She is the founder and president of the WAGE (Women Are Getting Even) Project Inc., which is dedicated to closing the wage gap in every American workplace. E.J. Graff, a senior researcher at the Brandeis Institute for Investigative Journalism, is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and has written for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Salon.com.

Review :
"[Getting Even]...calls for nothing short of another American revolution that enlists the public, top executives, and men as well as women in the cause of fairness." -- The Boston Globe