HARRISBURG -- Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll and more than a dozen legislators said yesterday that Pennsylvania and the nation must do more to ensure that women workers receive pay equal to men for the same work.

Sen. Jane Orie, R-McCandless, said that according to a study group called the National Committee on Pay Equity, women who worked full time, year-round made, on average, only 59 cents for every dollar earned by men in 1963.

That was the year the federal Equal Pay Act was enacted, which was supposed to close or erase that disparity. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was also supposed to eliminate such salary inequities.

And yet, Ms. Orie said, in 2006 women still earned only 77 cents on the dollar compared to men doing the same full-time job.

"We've only progressed by 18 cents over more than 40 years," said Sen. Michael Stack, D-Philadelphia, one of the three men at a news conference yesterday. "This pay disparity doesn't just hurt women themselves, it also hurts their families."

The pay equity study also said that over a lifetime of work, a female high school graduate earns about $700,000 less than a male with similar schooling, a female college graduate earns $1.2 million less than her male counterpart and a woman who completes study at a professional or graduate school earns $2 million less.

Speakers at the rally said that one reason -- or excuse -- for women's pay being lower than men's is because many women take a few months or years off from their careers or jobs in order to have children and raise their families, so that when they return to work their pay isn't as high as some of the males who have stayed on the job during that time.

Despite the documentation already available about the salary differential, Ms. Orie has introduced a resolution in the Senate (and state Rep. Katharine Watson, R-Bucks, in the House) calling for a General Assembly study panel called the Joint State Government Commission to analyze male/female wages and report back in November about what steps Pennsylvania can take to narrow the gap.