Today is national Equal Pay Day, the day when women’s pay over the past year and 103 days equals what men made last year alone.

Equal Pay Day is based on the national gender pay gap, where women earn 78 to 79 cents for every man’s dollar.

But while advocacy groups try to eliminate what they say is a widespread problem of women being paid less than men for the same work, Hawaii lawmakers have dropped an effort to address the issue.

Two bills aimed at strengthening Hawaii’s law against gender-based pay discrimination died in the state Legislature after making major headway earlier this year amid contentious public testimony.

The bill that made it furthest, Senate Bill 2313, was passed by the Senate in early March but died recently after failing to be heard by the House Finance Committee in what would have been the last of three House committee hearings before a full House vote.

A companion bill, House Bill 1909, was advanced by two House committees that didn’t include Finance, but then after passing the full House, no Senate committees took up the bill.

The bills proclaimed that Hawaii’s female workforce earns $1.7 billion less than the local male workforce annually, contributing to higher poverty rates for women (12 percent) than men (7 percent).

The pay disparity in Hawaii is 86 cents for every dollar that men earned for full-time, year-round work in 2014. Hawaii was the second-highest-paying state for women, behind New York at 87 cents, according to the American Association of University Women.

Hawaii Women Lawyers supported the equal pay bills, saying it is difficult in Hawaii to prevail on claims against employers for wage discrimination because of how state law is written.

The law makes it illegal to pay someone of the opposite sex less for “equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort and responsibility, performed under similar working conditions.”

Senate Bill 2313 would have changed the phrase “equal work” to “substantially equal work,” and Hawaii Women Lawyers said this would help ensure women are treated fairly and equally in the workplace.

This change, bill opponents argued, would have opened up employers to litigation.

There are allowances in the current law where pay for men and women can be different if it is governed by a seniority system, a merit system, a bona fide occupational qualification or the quantity or quality of production along with “any other permissible factor other than sex.”

The bill also would have prohibited employers from discouraging or preventing employees from inquiring about or disclosing co-worker pay.

The provision about disclosing co-worker pay is “critically important” to enhancing the state’s equal pay law, the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission said.

“Allowing employees to speak freely about their pay in the workplace has been a proven method to closing the wage gap,” the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women added.

Opponents of the bill claim that the pay gap is created by nondiscriminatory factors that include different work being used to compare average pay between women and men as well as women trading pay for better family-friendly employment benefits.

Bill detractors, which included the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, the Hawaii chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management, the Hawaii Automobile Dealers’ Association and the local chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, also said that revising the law as was proposed wouldn’t bring effective change, and that the state’s existing law along with federal law can be used to remedy cases where a man and a woman are paid differently for the same job.

“It is already against the law for an employer to discriminate in setting employee wages based on gender,” the Chamber said in written testimony.

Supporters of the bill included the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, which enforces state employment discrimination laws, the Women’s Caucus of the Democratic Party of Hawaii, YWCA of Oahu, Hawaii Women Lawyers, and the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women.

Despite the death of the bills, the YWCA and its restaurant tenant, Cafe Julia, are offering a 22 percent discount today on lunch at the cafe for customers who say, “I support equal pay.” The 22 percent discount, which is good from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., represents the national gender pay gap, where women earn 78 cents for every dollar men earn.

YWCA officials also encourage the public to write to Congress to support the federal Paycheck Fairness Act, which is pending before federal lawmakers.

The National Partnership for Women and Families said the Paycheck Fairness Act would close loopholes in the existing federal Equal Pay Act.

“Some state lawmakers have taken steps to address the issue by passing legislation to combat discriminatory pay practices and provide other workplace supports,” Debra Ness, president of the partnership, said in a statement. “It is past time for federal lawmakers to do the same.”