State Representative Christine P. Barber, 34th Middlesex District

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By State Representative Christine P. Barber

It’s 2024, and yet, for every dollar a man makes in Massachusetts, a woman earns 84 cents. Despite major efforts to address women’s equality in the workplace over many decades, significant gender and racial wage disparities for workers persist and contribute to the wealth gap. Recently, the National Women’s Law Center found that for every dollar white men earn, Black women earn 59 cents and Latinas just 53 cents.

These data points are not only startling, but unacceptable. My frustration over these numbers led me to work with other legislators, advocates, and business groups to take steps to make real changes to the wage gap in Massachusetts.

The current phase of this work began in 2016, when the Massachusetts legislature passed the groundbreaking Equal Pay Act. This law took important steps to start to close the wage gap by defining comparable work in industries. Massachusetts became the first state to ban employers from using an applicant’s salary history during the hiring process. Often, using salary history can confine women and people of color to lower wages and inhibit them from obtaining competitive salaries during their careers. Since the 2016 law, eighteen other states have adopted similar legislation to ban the use of salary history. We have seen the effects of this law, including major companies rethinking their pay structures. Yet, inequalities continue to persist.

To address these continued challenges, I filed a bill this session, H.1940 An Act relative to transparency in the workplace, to require employers to collect data on wages to identify gender and racial salary gaps.

As Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators, I supported this bill to become one of our top priorities this legislative session. Our bipartisan Caucus is made up of the 62 House and Senate women legislators in Massachusetts. While we come from various parts of the state and have different backgrounds, we work closely together to support issues that impact women and girls in the Commonwealth. This year, one of the Caucus’s strategic priorities is Elevating Women’s Economic Opportunity and Eliminating Barriers. This goal centers on advancing women’s economic stability and creating paths for future job growth. The pay transparency bill fit squarely within this objective. Working with women leaders, advocates, business groups and other legislators, we were able to build broad support to help draw attention to this bill and pass it in the House and Senate.

A few weeks ago, Governor Healey signed the Frances Perkins Equity Act into law, named after the first female United States Secretary of Labor who was also from Massachusetts. This law is a critical next step to achieve true pay equity.

The Frances Perkins Equity Act requires employers to disclose the salary or hourly pay range in job postings and when offering a job promotion or transfer. After the Equal Pay Act was passed in 2016, companies began to ask for salary expectations rather than salary histories, and research found that women and people of color often asked for less money and therefore often continued to earn less.

The new law also includes my data collection bill, which requires employers to collect data on salaries by gender and race, to help address inequalities and identify solutions to mitigate them. We cannot change what we do not measure, which is why formal reporting is a critical step to closing the wage gap.

The Frances Perkins Workplace Equity Act is another step forward to ensure economic empowerment for women, and is vital to creating a stronger workforce in Massachusetts. By closing the wage gap, not only will our workplaces and communities become more equitable, but Massachusetts will be more competitive with other states. I am proud that Massachusetts is continuing to foster an environment where all people can thrive and where gender and racial wage gaps are eradicated for all workers.

Christine P. Barber is State Representative for the 34th Middlesex District, which includes neighborhoods in Medford & Somerville. She is Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators.