August 23 is #BlackWomenEqualPay
Day 2016
Here’s a sad truth in 21st
Century America:
Race and gender both impact how much people get paid.
According to AAUW’s The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap
(Spring 2016), the pay gap affects women from all backgrounds, at all ages, and
of all levels of educational achievement, although earnings and the gap vary
depending on a woman’s individual situation.
Among full-time workers in
2014, Hispanic,
African American,
American
Indian, and Native Hawaiian women had lower median annual earnings compared
with non-Hispanic white and Asian American women. But within racial/ethnic
groups, African American, Hispanic, American Indian, and Native Hawaiian women
experienced a smaller gender pay gap compared with men in the same group than
did non-Hispanic white and Asian American women.
August 23 is the symbolic day
that the earnings of African American women will catch up to their white,
non-Hispanic male counterparts’ earnings from last year.
African American women have
to work nearly an additional 8 months, or 238 days into the next year, to earn
as much as white, non-Hispanic men did in the previous year alone. And based on
today’s wage gap - that means African American women lose a staggering $877,480
over the course of a 40-year career compared to white, non-Hispanic men.
So if you think the 79 cent
pay gap for white women is bad, the pay gap is worse for women of color at 63
cents. And the gender pay gap is worse for mothers;
more than 50% of married African American mothers bring in 1/2 or more of their
families' income.
Thanks to the pay gap, women
struggle to pay
off student loan debt even more than men do. Women
in every state experience the pay gap, but in some states it’s worse than
others. And women face a pay gap in nearly every
occupation.
When we look at the pay gap
for Black women, we find:
·
Women of color
are more likely to work for minimum wage than white Americans;
·
Black women
are more likely to work in the lowest-paying occupations;
·
Black women are
underrepresented in the top-earning end of the labor force;
·
Black
women less likely to work in the high-pay
engineering & tech fields;
·
Black moms are
more likely to be the sole breadwinner for their family;
and
·
Black women are
paid 60 percent of what male servers are paid.
And this pay gap is not a result of lack of
education. While more education does help
to increase women’s earnings, but it still doesn’t close the gender pay gap. Black
women with
BAs on average earn $10,000 less that white men with an Associate’s degree.As a result, Black women who
complete college degrees are less able to pay off
their student loans promptly, leaving them paying more and for a longer
time than men.
This lack of opportunity is
especially stark at our nation’s private and public research universities. Out
of 176,468 tenured full professors, only 2% are women of color (Black, Hispanic
or Native American). By contrast, white men make up 72%, white women another
17%, and men of color 8%.
If the gender and racial wage
gap was eliminated tomorrow, an African American woman be able to afford 153
more weeks of food for her family. Talk about leveling the playing field!
And the situation is even
worse for Hispanic
and Latina women, who were paid only 54 percent of what white men were paid
in 2014.
This gets to the heart of
racial and gender social justice inequities for African-American and women of
color in our society.
The pay gap for all women is
a huge economic drag on our economy that covers the lifespan. It won’t fix
itself. And while some states are working to address equal pay, that is not the
whole answer. Congress can and should do more. And if Congress won’t tackle
this problem, let’s tackle Congress. It is an election year after all.
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