This could be the year that Mississippi becomes the 50th state to require women to be paid the same as men for doing the same job.
Equal-pay legislation (H.B. 770 and S.B. 2451) soon will head to a conference committee, after a Senate debate in which the lawmakers pushing for the bill said it’s mostly symbolic.
Neither proposal is likely to change many female workers’ paychecks because employers would still be allowed to pay men more based on seniority or merit, say advocates including Lilly Ledbetter, for whom Congress named a 2009 equal pay law.
“We want ...