Happy Equal Pay Day!

And you thought tax day was a bummer: (un)Happy Equal Pay Day to you all! (It's actually tomorrow, but let's get a jumpstart on the, um, celebrations.) This is how far into the next year all us women would have had to work to equal a man’s wages for 2007. And it gets worse; if you’re a mom you’re not there yet. You’ll have to keep working through May to catch up. (By which time you’re that much further behind a man on this year’s wages and raises. And next year’s worse, and so on.)

But don’t get down; get outraged. The ACLU and others are using the date to drum up support for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would undo last year’s awful Supreme Court decision eviscerating anti-discrimination law. The Supremes ruled that the statute of limitations on suing for pay discrimination kicks in from the first unequal paycheck, even though most victims don’t find out about it until much later. That’s just what happened to Lilly Ledbetter (love the name), who learned only years into her job at Goodyear that she was paid less than her male colleagues, when a colleague slipped her an anonymous note.

Congress is set to vote this week on the bill. Go to the National Women’s Law Center for numbers and script for calling your senators, or to email them.