Government officials and advocacy groups came together Tuesday to recognize Equal Pay Day and raise awareness for Wisconsin’s gender wage gap.

Equal Pay Day is an annual event that marks how much longer women must work to earn as much as men did in the previous year. For example, women working from January 2007 through April 22 make as much on average as men made from January through December 2007.

According to a report by The Center on Wisconsin Strategy, Wisconsin women earned 22 percent less than men in 2006.

Women make up half of the graduates from Wisconsin colleges and universities but earn less than men on average, according to a statement from the Wisconsin Women’s Council.

There is a 10 percent wage gap that affects women with bachelor’s degrees, but the same gap affects women with higher degrees and even tenured faculty members at universities, according to Christine Lidbury, executive director of WWC.

“The yawning wage gap reflects the persistent gender discrimination that we all would like to think doesn’t exist in the year 2008,” Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton said.

Lawton said choices regarding education do not contribute to the wage gap, adding the inequity exists in all professions but is largest in sales-related fields.

Money lost to a woman and her family because of the wage gap damages not only the ability of the family to prosper economically, but also the state economy, according to Lawton.

“The wage gap creates lost opportunities for businesses by not harvesting the best group of women because [the wage gap] continues to hold them back,” Lawton said.

According to Lawton, the only way to ensure equal opportunities for women is to insist on it.

She said women want to pretend gender discrimination no longer exists, but data show there are persistent gender issues that can only be solved if women refuse to tolerate them.

“We haven’t caught up to the fact that women can do the same job and they should be doing it for the same money,” state Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, said.

The wage gap is closing slowly but steadily, and it will still take two or three generations to close completely, according to COWS Associate Director Laura Dresser.

Earlier this year, the state Senate passed the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, but the legislation was not addressed in the Assembly.

According to Hansen, if Wisconsin continues at the current pace the wage gap should be closed by 2050, but passing the Equal Pay Enforcement Act will decrease the gap more quickly.