MAY 2018 • FOGHORN 19 FOGHORNFOCUS: HUMAN RESOURCES recently wrote an article that appeared on CNN.com that addresses the issue of fair and equitable wages. “Despite the fact that women make up nearly half of the workforce and receive more college degrees than men, they earn significantly less,” Rowe- Finkbeiner wrote. “Today, on average, women earn just 80 cents to a man’s dollar, with Latinas earning only 54 cents, black women only 63 cents and mothers only 71 cents.” Her source for these figures is the National Women’s Law Center’s most recent salary report. One component of the wage disparity issue is that some women are fearful of being labeled as complainers or a problem, so they don’t speak out and demand equal pay. Women in Travel/Tourism/ Hospitality Industries While women comprise less than a quarter of the maritime industry’s workforce (see Emily Stier’s article on page 22), according to Mark Young who published an article in the October 25, 2017 issue of Lodging, “the hospital- ity labor workforce in the United States is 51 percent female.” This means that even though a small percentage of women may be actively pursuing a career in the maritime industry, if your vessel operation falls under the broad hospi- tality industry umbrella of travel and tourism, then chances are a significant number of women are either seeking jobs from you or are already in your employ. Equitable pay then, is a real issue for the passenger vessel industry. Advocacy and Legislation Of course, this issue isn’t unique to the passenger vessel or maritime indus- tries. It’s not even unique to the U.S. In fact, in the UK, Parliament passed a law requiring corporations with more than 250 employees to post the pay and gender of each job by early April and the result – nearly eight out of 10 companies and public sector institu- tions--definitively showed that men are paid more than women in that nation. Patrick Whyte, Europe Editor of Skift, a travel/tourism/hospital- ity research platform, said, “Sadly, that women get paid less than men doesn’t come as a surprise but it is still shocking to see such a huge disparity. With the figures now out in the open in the UK, companies have a respon- sibility to see that the gap is closed as quickly as possible. We’d also like to see more diversity among the leader- ship teams.” C l o s e r t o h o m e , i n M a rc h , Washington state passed the Equal Pay Opportunity Act, its first equal pay law since 1943. According to Rowe- Finkbeiner, this will advance paycheck transparency, address gendered job tracking and more. “New Jersey followed by passing one of the strongest equal pay bills in the nation – and Rhode Island is poised to advance strong equal pay legislation.” Rowe-Finkbeiner said. “Over 30 additional states are consid- ering equal pay legislation this year.”