Wearing red, on a designated day in February at least, has come to symbolize awareness about heart health. The New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women is urging women to wear red on Earth Day, not for the heart, but for equal pay.

 

"Wear RED on Equal Pay Day to symbolize how far women and minorities are ‘in the red’ with their pay," the commission urges in a press release.

 

You can bet Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, noted feminist Dr. Martha Burk, and Jane Wishner, an Albuquerque social justice activist, will be wearing red instead of Earth Day green. The three will be holding a press conference Tuesday at the Frontier Restaurant in Albuquerque to raise awareness about the pay gap.

 

Their selection of the day isn’t so much because it’s Earth Day, but because it’s a Tuesday in April, the day originally set by the National Committee on Pay Equity in 1996 to raise pay gap awareness. According to the group, that day in April is how far into the next year a women must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year. Tuesday is also the day on which women’s wages catch up to men’s from the previous week, the group says.

 

That gap translates to $77 to a man’s $100 in earnings — $23 less to spend on goods and services, as the group illustrates with an Equal Pay "coupon." The group says the gap is even worse for most women of color, with Latinas earning 59 cents and African American women earning 72 cents for every dollar. The sum for Asian American women reportedly is 93 cents, based on 2007 figures.

 

Meanwhile, Ed Mazria’s Santa Fe non-profit, Architecture 2030, has another suggestion for Earth Day attire — wear blue! The firm is backing blue attire as a show of support for an immediate moratorium on construction of coal-fired power plants. The blue is a reference to the organization’s 2030 Blueprint, a document that calls for energy-efficient design of buildings to offset the need for any new coal plants, which emit heavy levels of carbon dioxide.

 

So, if you’re for both equal pay and a coal moratorium, should you wear both red and blue? That might dilute the effort. Add white running shoes and you’ve got a different message altogether.