Professional Black woman mediacityg
By Suzanne Potter Reporter/Producer, California News Service, a bureau of Public News Service.
Today is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, and at 11 a.m. PT, advocates hope to get the topic trending with a “social media storm.”
The wage gap is stark. Black women working full-time, year-round, make 69 cents for every dollar made by non-Hispanic white men. The number is 66 cents when you include all full-time, part-time, and part-year workers.
Deborah Vagins, national campaign director for the nonprofit civil-rights group Equal Rights Advocates and director of its Equal Pay Today coalition, explained the day is intended to spark debate.
“Black women have to work all the way into July of this year to make what white non-Hispanic men would have made in 2023 alone,” Vagins pointed out. “It’s an acknowledgment of that pay gap.”
Advocates are pressing Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would protect all workers against retaliation for discussing their pay. It would also ban the use of prior salary history when setting wages and require the federal government to collect pay data from employers, making it easier to root out disparities.
Vagins noted the fight for equal pay for equal work is more complex than the battle against racial and gender discrimination.
“It’s also the lack of pay transparency in the workplace,” Vagins emphasized. “It is setting salaries based on your prior salary history rather than on your qualifications for the job. It’s jobs failing to have protections against harassment or pregnancy discrimination.”
Vagins also cited the segregation of Black women into poverty-level minimum-wage work, particularly tipped jobs in the restaurant industry using a subminimum wage.
