Founder Sarah Blanchard (left) with a local reporter during Equal Pay Day.
April 4 was Equal Pay Day, a day bringing attention to the wage discrepancies that exist between men and women in the workforce. It was started in 1996 and held every April to symbolize how far into the year women need to work to make what men did in the previous year, according to the National Committee on Pay Equity.
A Roanoke, Virginia bakery did its part to spread the message. Fresh Baked Bakery is a couture cake studio that was founded in 2014 by Sarah Blanchard, a Baking & Pastry Arts graduate of Johnson & Wales University.
On April 4, Fresh Baked Bakery offered customers a 20 percent discount to bring awareness to the gender pay gap. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women earn 79.6 cents for every dollar a man makes, about 20 percent less.
“I hope that by doing this and bringing awareness to the day that we can fix that problem and stop this from happening here in the United States,” said Blanchard.
