Patricia Arquette joined MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell to discuss National Equal Pay Day on Tuesday, during which the Academy Award-winning actress declared a “breaking point” in the fight for wage equality.
“Women have been fighting for equal rights for 227 years,” Arquette said, “and at this point now we’ve reached a breaking point because women are contributing to 40 percent of our American families.”
Arquette explained that millions of women who are single mothers aren’t paid equally and that one in five hungry children is American, with a majority claiming full-time working moms. She called for changes and said that women simply can’t wait any longer.
“We see this pay discrepancy between women and men in 98 percent of all industries,” which “costs the average woman almost a half million dollars over her lifetime … and with women with higher education, it costs them $2 million over their lifetime,” Arquette said.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) also joined the panel to discuss the Joint Economic Committee’s report on the gender wage gap and the recent wage-discrimination complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by members of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team.
“When women begin their careers there’s very little discrimination, but by the time they’re 75, they’re making half the income of a man and it has, over their lifetime, they’ve lost over half a million dollars in income, over $10,800 each year and it … contributes to older women being the largest segment of poverty in old age,” Maloney said.
Check out the entire segment below.