Reflections from EARCON 2026, Equal Pay Day, and a Lifetime of Building Worker Power

By Claudia Cortez, a Latina woman, labor organizer, and Director of Programs of a Worker Center

Equal pay is more than a number on a paycheck. It is about dignity, economic security, opportunity, and the power to shape our own lives. For women, particularly Latinas, immigrant women, and women of color, the fight for fair wages is inseparable from the broader struggle for workers’ rights and economic justice.

As a Latina woman, a national labor organizer, and the Director of Programs of a Worker Center, I have spent much of my career working alongside people who understand what it means to work hard and still struggle to make ends meet. I have seen the determination of workers who organize for better wages, the strength of communities that come together around a shared goal, and the importance of building relationships that turn collective demands into meaningful change.

My experience leading the successful 2004 living wage campaign in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and my work on the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) TSA airport worker campaign in 2010 helped shape my understanding of what it takes to build worker power. Today, in my role as a Worker Center director in Ohio, I continue to see how grassroots organizing, community partnerships, and policy advocacy can improve workers’ lives.

That is why the EARCON 2026 session, “State of Women’s Work: Policy Choice, Power and Participation,” resonated so deeply with me.

The session raised a fundamental question: Are women getting good jobs?

Not simply jobs, but jobs that pay fairly, provide economic security, offer meaningful protections, and allow women to support themselves and their families with dignity.

As we recognize Equal Pay Day and reflect on the persistent wage disparities women experience, the timing of this conversation could not be more important. It is an opportunity to connect the lessons of our past organizing victories with the work still ahead of us.

My central takeaway is simple: We cannot close the pay gap by asking women to work harder within systems that undervalue their labor. We must organize to change those systems.

Equal Pay Day: A Reminder That Our Work Is Not Yet Done

Equal Pay Day is more than an awareness date. It is a reminder of the economic inequality that continues to shape women’s lives and the urgency of addressing it.

In 2026, national Equal Pay Day fell on March 26. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that women working full-time, year-round earned a median of approximately 83 cents for every dollar earned by men, based on 2024 American Community Survey data. These figures remind us that, despite decades of progress, a substantial earnings gap remains. (U.S. Census Bureau)

For Latinas, the disparity is even more pronounced. Latina Equal Pay Day falls on October 8 in 2026. According to Equal Pay Today, based on 2024 earnings data, Latinas earned approximately 53 cents for every dollar earned by White, non-Hispanic men when all earners are included, and approximately 60 cents among full-time, year-round workers. (Equal Pay Today)

As a Latina, these numbers are deeply concerning. They represent the economic consequences of disparities that can accumulate throughout a woman’s working life, affecting her ability to afford housing, support her family, build savings, and retire with security.

They also remind us that the gender pay gap does not affect all women equally. Race, ethnicity, occupation, immigration status, caregiving responsibilities, and access to opportunity all shape women’s economic experiences.

We cannot talk about women’s economic progress without asking which women are benefiting, which women are being left behind, and what must change to close those gaps.

Equal Pay Day should not simply be a moment when we acknowledge the problem. It should be a call to action.

For those of us working in labor organizing and worker advocacy, the question is not whether women deserve equal pay. We do. The question is what we are prepared to do collectively to make fair pay a reality.

Are Women Getting Jobs or Are We Getting Good Jobs?

One of the most important lessons from EARCON 2026 was the distinction between participating in the workforce and achieving economic security.

Women have made significant gains in labor force participation. Yet employment alone does not tell us whether women are earning enough to support their families, accessing benefits, receiving equal pay, or advancing into higher-paying positions.

During the session, the data presented showed that women continued to earn less than men in all 20 of the most common occupations for women. These included healthcare, education, administrative support, accounting, customer service, and personal care.

For example, the reported median weekly earnings for registered nurses were approximately $1,517 for women, compared with $1,900 for men. Among secretaries and administrative assistants, women earned approximately $1,298 per week, compared with $1,517 for men.

These differences are more than statistics on a presentation slide. They represent money that women could use to pay rent, purchase groceries, afford childcare, repay student loans, save for retirement, and invest in their futures.

Women are heavily represented in essential industries such as healthcare and education, yet they remain concentrated in many lower-paying positions within these sectors. The jobs that care for our families, educate our children, and support our communities are indispensable, but their importance is not always reflected in the wages workers receive.

As a labor organizer, I believe we must look beyond the number of women who are employed. We must ask whether the jobs available to them provide fair compensation, benefits, security, and opportunities for advancement.

Can a woman support herself and her family on her wages? Can she take time off when her child is sick without risking her income? Can she challenge unfair treatment without fear of retaliation? Can she pursue a promotion without encountering discrimination or barriers that have little to do with her qualifications?

These are the questions that should guide our conversations about women’s work.

Progress is not simply about getting women into the workforce. It is about ensuring that women have access to good jobs, fair wages, and the economic power to build secure futures.

My Experience in the Labor Movement: Change Takes Organizing

My understanding of these issues comes from years of organizing alongside workers and learning what it takes to move from a shared concern to a successful campaign.

In 2004, I had the opportunity to lead a successful living wage campaign in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2010, I worked on the AFGE TSA airport worker campaign. These experiences reinforced my belief that workers need more than the opportunity to speak about their concerns. They need the relationships, organization, and collective power to influence the conditions under which they work.

Organizing teaches us that an injustice experienced by one worker may be part of a larger pattern affecting many others. It helps workers recognize their shared interests, develop common demands, and build the strength necessary to seek meaningful change.

It also teaches us that winning requires collaboration.

The Santa Fe living wage campaign remains an important example of what can happen when workers and their allies come together around a common goal. That experience continues to inform how I approach the fight for women’s economic equality today.

My work on the 2010 TSA airport worker campaign further reinforced the importance of collective voice and the need for workers to have meaningful opportunities to advocate for fair treatment and better working conditions.

The settings and demands of these campaigns were different, but the underlying lesson was consistent: workers should not have to confront unequal conditions alone. When they organize around shared interests, they can build the power to demand change.

That lesson is particularly relevant to the gender pay gap. Women should not have to negotiate individually for fairness in workplaces where unequal practices remain unexamined. We need collective strategies that address the structures producing these disparities.

Santa Fe, 2004: A Living Wage Victory Built on Collaboration

One of the most important lessons of my career came from leading the successful living wage campaign in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2004.

What made that campaign successful was not the work of one person or one organization. It was the collaboration among workers, strong labor support, community members, businesses willing to give their workers a fair share, and City Council members who were open to listening to their constituents and willing to uplift the people in their community.

The campaign succeeded because people with different roles and perspectives came together around a shared commitment to economic dignity.

Workers were at the center of the effort. Their experiences made clear why wages mattered and what it meant to work hard without earning enough to meet basic needs. Their voices gave the campaign its purpose.

Strong labor support helped strengthen the organizing effort and advance the shared goal. Community members recognized that wages were not simply an individual employment issue; they affected families, neighborhoods, and the broader well-being of Santa Fe.

We also saw the importance of engaging members of the business community who were willing to recognize that workers deserved a fair share of the value they helped create. Their willingness to participate demonstrated that it was possible to bring different stakeholders into a conversation about fair wages and community well-being.

Equally important was the openness of City Council members to listen to their constituents and their willingness to consider how public policy could help uplift community members. Their engagement reflected an essential principle of public service: elected officials must be willing to hear the concerns of the people they represent and take those concerns seriously.

Looking back, I see the Santa Fe campaign as a powerful reminder that organizing is about more than mobilizing people around a demand. It is about building a coalition capable of making that demand matter.

Workers brought their experiences and leadership. Labor brought organizing support. Community members helped build broader support. Businesses willing to participate demonstrated that fair wages could be part of a shared commitment to a stronger community. Elected officials had the opportunity to respond to the needs and aspirations of their constituents.

Each played a role in creating the conditions for success.

As a Latina woman and labor organizer, that experience reinforced my belief that economic justice requires us to move beyond asking working people to endure hardship. We must build the collective will to improve the conditions in which people live and work.

The lesson I carry from Santa Fe is especially relevant today: closing the gender pay gap will require women to organize, but it will also require strong partnerships among workers, labor organizations, community groups, responsible employers, and policymakers willing to listen and act.

Organizing builds the power to win, and collaboration helps turn that power into meaningful change.

From Grassroots Organizing to Policy Change in Ohio

Today, as the Director of a Worker Center, I see how the lessons of Santa Fe continue to shape our work in Ohio.

Our ability to strengthen the Worker Center, reach more workers in our community, and pursue policy changes at the local and state levels has been strengthened by our partnership with Policy Matters Ohio (PMO).

PMO has served as an important bridge between the everyday experiences of working people and the policy conversations where decisions affecting their lives are made. For our Worker Center, this partnership has helped us connect community-based organizing with policy research, advocacy, and opportunities to advance stronger protections for workers.

At the Worker Center, we hear directly from workers about the challenges they face: unpaid wages, confusing pay practices, economic insecurity, and difficulty understanding or exercising their workplace rights. We see how these challenges affect not only individual workers but also their children, families, and communities.

We are close to these experiences because workers bring them to us. But identifying a problem is only the beginning. To achieve lasting change, we must also help bring those experiences into the spaces where policies are developed, debated, and adopted.

Policy Matters Ohio has helped us build that bridge.

One important example is the Pay Stub Protection Act in Ohio. Our work alongside PMO reflects the importance of connecting workers’ experiences with policy advocacy. The law, signed in January 2025 and effective in April 2025, requires Ohio employers to provide employees with pay stubs. These records help workers verify their earnings, hours, and deductions and can provide important evidence when addressing wage violations. PMO advocated for this protection, and our partnership illustrates the value of connecting worker-centered organizations with policy expertise. (Policy Matters Ohio)

For many workers, a pay stub might seem like a small thing. But transparency about wages is fundamental to accountability. Workers need to know what they have earned, what has been deducted, and whether they have received the compensation they are owed.

This is an important part of the broader fight for pay equity. We cannot challenge unfair compensation practices if workers lack access to the information needed to understand and document what is happening.

I often think of PMO as a voice magnifier for the common worker. Workers’ experiences should not remain isolated stories shared only within their households or community organizations. They deserve to be heard in the broader conversations that shape public policy.

Our Worker Center brings relationships with workers, knowledge of their day-to-day challenges, and a commitment to grassroots leadership. PMO brings policy research, expertise, and advocacy that can help connect those experiences to systemic solutions. By working together, we can strengthen the visibility of workers’ concerns and our ability to pursue meaningful change.

This partnership has reinforced something I have learned throughout my career: no single organization can do everything alone.

Just as the Santa Fe living wage campaign depended on workers, labor, community members, supportive businesses, and responsive elected officials, our work in Ohio benefits from partnerships that connect grassroots organizing with policy advocacy.

For me, this is what building worker power looks like. It means ensuring that workers are not merely the people affected by policy decisions. They must also have a voice in shaping those decisions.

And when we talk about equal pay, that principle becomes even more important. We need policies that promote fair compensation, transparency, and accountability. We need workers who understand their rights and have the support to exercise them. And we need strong partnerships that help bring workers’ experiences to the attention of employers and policymakers.

Our experience in Ohio reminds me that the path to economic justice runs from the workplace to the community and from the community to the policy table.

Why the Pay Gap Cannot Be Solved by Individual Effort Alone

Women are frequently told to negotiate better salaries, pursue advanced degrees, build professional networks, and become more confident in advocating for themselves. These can be valuable strategies, and women deserve every opportunity to advance.

But we must be honest about the limits of individual solutions.

What happens when a woman negotiates for higher pay but her employer’s compensation practices lack transparency? What happens when a Latina worker has the qualifications for a better position but encounters discrimination or limited opportunities for advancement? What happens when a mother cannot accept a promotion because affordable childcare is unavailable? What happens when a woman fears speaking up because losing her job would put her family at risk?

We cannot place the entire burden of closing the pay gap on individual women.

The EARCON 2026 session highlighted how caregiving responsibilities, unequal access to education, student debt, discrimination, and occupational segregation affect women’s economic opportunities. Women may need additional credentials to reach higher-paying positions, yet obtaining those credentials can create substantial debt. They may want to work full-time throughout the year, yet family responsibilities and inadequate workplace policies can make that difficult.

These barriers are interconnected. They reflect decisions about wages, benefits, workplace expectations, public investment, and the value society places on different kinds of work.

This is why our response must also be interconnected.

We must advocate for pay transparency, affordable childcare, paid leave, fair wages, protection against discrimination and harassment, and meaningful opportunities for workers to organize and bargain collectively.

We must also challenge the undervaluation of occupations traditionally performed by women, including caregiving, domestic work, education, and other essential services.

Women should not have to choose between caring for their families and maintaining their economic security. Nor should they be expected to accept lower wages because the work they perform has historically been undervalued.

Equal pay requires more than equal treatment on paper. It requires changing the conditions that determine whose work is valued, whose voices are heard, and who has the power to demand fairness.

Policy Matters, but Workers Must Have the Power to Shape It

Another important lesson from EARCON 2026 was the influence of state policy on women’s economic security.

The session examined wage policies, rights to organize, and worker protections as key factors in determining whether states create conditions in which working women can succeed.

Minimum wage standards, equal pay protections, paid sick leave, domestic worker protections, safeguards against sexual harassment, and collective bargaining rights can all affect women’s ability to earn a living and remain secure at work.

The discussion of tipped workers was particularly relevant. Women make up a large share of this workforce, and policies allowing a lower subminimum cash wage can leave workers dependent on tips to meet their basic needs. The different approaches taken by states, including California and Oregon’s elimination of the subminimum tipped wage, demonstrate how public policy can affect workers’ earnings.

But policy change does not happen automatically.

It requires people to organize, develop shared priorities, engage decision-makers, and maintain pressure until commitments become meaningful protections.

My experience in Santa Fe taught me the importance of elected officials who are willing to listen to their constituents. My work in Ohio has reinforced the importance of building partnerships that help workers’ experiences reach the policy table.

As we advocate for equal pay, we must therefore ask not only what policies are needed, but also how working women can participate in shaping them.

We need women in low-wage jobs, Latina workers, immigrant women, domestic workers, and women of color to be part of the conversations that determine their economic futures. Their experiences should inform the solutions, and their leadership should help guide the work.

Policy can establish protections, but organized workers and strong community partnerships are essential to winning those protections, defending them, and ensuring that they make a difference in people’s lives.

From Awareness to Collective Action: What Must We Do Next?

As I reflect on EARCON 2026, Equal Pay Day, and my years in the labor movement, I see several priorities that should guide our work.

• Organize around pay equity. We must support pay transparency, identify unjustified disparities, and demand accountability from employers and institutions.
• Strengthen worker leadership. Women must have meaningful opportunities to identify their concerns, set priorities, and lead campaigns for change.
• Build broad-based coalitions. Worker centers, labor organizations, community groups, policy organizations, responsible businesses, and elected officials must work together toward shared goals.
• Advance policies that reflect workers’ realities. Fair wages, paid leave, affordable childcare, protection against discrimination, and the right to organize are essential to women’s economic security.
• Amplify the voices of women most affected by inequality. Latina workers, immigrant women, Black women, and women in low-wage occupations must be recognized as leaders in this work.
• Hold decision-makers accountable. We must measure progress by real outcomes: improved wages, stronger protections, greater transparency, and more opportunities for women to advance.
• Connect grassroots organizing to policy advocacy. Workers’ experiences must help shape the laws, standards, and practices that govern their working lives.

These priorities require sustained effort. Organizing is not always easy, and policy victories rarely happen overnight. But our experience shows that progress is possible when people come together, develop a strategy, and commit to a common goal.

We must move beyond awareness and build the relationships, coalitions, and collective power necessary to win lasting change.

Equal Pay Day Is a Call to Organize, Not Just a Day to Raise Awareness

As I write these reflections, the timing feels especially meaningful. The national Equal Pay Day earlier this year and Latina Equal Pay Day on October 8 bring the lessons of EARCON 2026 into sharper focus.

Latina Equal Pay Day, in particular, calls attention to the persistent wage disparities Latina workers experience. The figures are a reminder that the economic consequences of unequal pay are not distributed equally among women. (Equal Pay Today)

As a Latina woman who has spent years organizing workers, I find it unacceptable that women continue to face these disparities while contributing so much to our economy and communities.

But I also know that raising awareness is only the beginning.

Equal Pay Day must be more than a social media post, a conference discussion, or an annual reminder that women earn less. It must be an opportunity to strengthen our organizing, build new partnerships, advance policy solutions, and hold employers and policymakers accountable.

We must ask ourselves what we are doing between Equal Pay Days to change the conditions that produce unequal pay.

Are we helping workers understand their rights? Are we building the relationships necessary to organize around shared concerns? Are we supporting policies that promote fair compensation and economic security? Are we ensuring that the voices of Latina workers and other women most affected by wage inequality are heard where decisions are made?

And are we building the kind of coalitions that can turn those demands into lasting change?

My experiences have taught me that the answer cannot rest with any one organization or individual. We need workers willing to organize, labor organizations committed to supporting them, community partners ready to stand alongside them, policy organizations able to amplify their concerns, responsible employers willing to do their part, and elected officials prepared to listen and act.

That is how we move from awareness to accountability.

That is how we move from individual struggles to collective action.

And that is how we begin to close the pay gap.

My Biggest Takeaway From EARCON 2026

When I reflect on the State of Women’s Work session, my experience leading the Santa Fe living wage campaign in 2004, my work on the 2010 TSA airport worker campaign, and my current role as a Worker Center director in Ohio, I see a common thread: meaningful economic change requires collective power, strong partnerships, and the determination to turn shared concerns into action.

Santa Fe taught me that workers, labor, community members, businesses, and elected officials can come together to achieve a shared goal when they are willing to listen, collaborate, and recognize their common responsibility to the community.

My experience in Ohio has reinforced the importance of partnerships such as ours with Policy Matters Ohio. When grassroots organizations and policy advocates work together, we can amplify workers’ voices and help translate their experiences into policy solutions that improve their lives.

EARCON 2026 reminded me why these lessons matter so much for women today.

We cannot close the gender pay gap by simply encouraging women to negotiate better salaries, pursue more education, or work harder. We must address the systems and policies that continue to undervalue women’s labor, limit their opportunities, and place disproportionate economic burdens on their shoulders.

As a Latina woman and the Director of a Worker Center, I believe our responsibility is to help build the collective power necessary to change those conditions. That means listening to workers, supporting their leadership, building coalitions, strengthening policy partnerships, and ensuring that women most affected by inequality have a meaningful role in shaping the solutions.

Equal pay is not a favor to women. It is a matter of fairness, dignity, and economic justice.

The fight for equal pay belongs in our workplaces, our communities, our policy discussions, and our organizing campaigns. It requires employers to be accountable, policymakers to act, and organizations like ours to continue building the power of working people.

As we reflect on Equal Pay Day, let us commit to doing more than acknowledging the gap. Let us organize to close it.

We have seen what is possible when workers organize and communities come together. Now we must bring that same determination to the fight for women’s economic equality.

When women organize, our individual experiences become collective demands. When our organizations collaborate, our voices become stronger. And when that collective power is translated into policy and accountability, we create the possibility of lasting change.

The work ahead is clear: fair wages, dignified work, stronger worker protections, and economic justice for all women.

Equal pay will not happen simply because it is the right thing to do. We must organize, build power, and make it happen together.