HOUGHTON – In addition to plying passersby with cookies promoting Equal Pay Day on Wednesday, members of the Society of Women Engineers and Copper Country League of Women Voters on Tuesday handed out brochures proposing remedies to the pay gap between men and women, including supporting the Paycheck Fairness Act and state laws, and advocating for fellow employees.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 already bars differences in wages between men and women working in the same field in the same company. The Paycheck Fairness Act would make information about salaries more transparent, require companies to demonstrate salary differences are not based on gender, and prevent companies from retaliating against people who ask about wage differences or reveal their own wages to coworkers.

There are also several equal pay bills being considered in the Michigan Legislature.

“All of us are going to be working with colleagues of both genders, and so wherever we are in our careers, we can keep the data in mind and advocate and do a better job, and then also we can be a nexus for bringing out this data to other people,” said Faith Morrison, a professor of chemical engineering at Michigan Tech.