Collective sign.
August 3 is the day that reminds everyone – especially black women- that they are paid $0.37 less than their white, non- Hispanic male colleagues. Another way to look at the disparity is to say that black women are only paid $.67 to every dollar her white male counterparts make. This means she has to work 517 days, or an additional 214 days, to make what he makes in just 365 days.
To put it in perspective, if the pay gap were eliminated, a Black woman working full-time year-round would have enough money for more than two years of childcare, two years of tuition and fees for a four-year public university, 53 more weeks of food for her family or 22 more months of rent and utilities, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families.
“The fact that we are talking about this every year reflects the stubborn, structural nature of pay inequities, which is manifold,” says Valerie Wilson, director at the Economic Policy Institute. “Occupational segregation limits Black women’s access to higher paying occupations. But even when employed in the same occupation, pay discrimination results in lower earnings for women relative to men.”
Even worse is that the gap isn’t closing. The National Women’s Law Center said the Black women’s pay gap has closed by $0.03 over the last 40 years.
This loss of income is also felt by the family. Four million family households in the United States are headed by Black women– and nearly 1 in 4 of those households live below the poverty level. This means that more than 900,000 family households headed by Black women live in poverty, demonstrating the imperative to eliminate the wage gap.
The current pandemic isn’t proving to help working black women with unemployment hitting an all-time high of 8.5%
Last year, Black Women’s Equal Pay Day provided an opportunity to spotlight the economic hardships Black women—many of whom are essential workers and/or caregivers—are facing due to the pandemic. These challenges remain, as COVID infection rates surge across the country.
Despite the fact that so many women have dropped out of the workforce (or scaled back their hours) during the pandemic, the date of Black Women’s Equal Pay Day has not been pushed back—at least not yet. Next year’s Black Women’s Equal Pay Day will reflect more up-to-date annual earnings data from the U.S. Census population survey,
