The Gender Pay Gap shows that black women are at the bottom of the scale

The Gender Pay Gap is a terminology used to refer to the wide difference in what working-class women earn versus their male counterparts, in a year.

Every year, the Equal Pay Day is marked, the day symbolizes how much working women may have earned as much as their male counterparts over the previous year. That is, working women may have had to work for a couple of months extra to earn what working men earned in the last year.

Equal Pay Day for all American working women was officially on March 31. That is, the average working woman finally earned as much as what a working man earned over 2019, on March 31, 2020.

However, when it comes to race, especially the Black race, the gap gets wider. August 13 was the official Equal Pay Day for Black women working in America.

The purpose of marking Equal Pay Day shows that there is still much work to be done to close up the gap between men and women, and women of color. The National Women’s Law Center said in a press release that, “comparing what women of color are paid to what white, non-Hispanic men make demonstrates the enormous economic impact of the double burden of sexism and racism.”

“We have a long way to go before equal pay is a reality for women of color. Race and gender wage gaps harm women’s economic security—and their families’—and add up to substantial losses over time. A woman of color who works full time, year round, can lose more than $1 million in income over a 40-year career because of the wage gap,” the NWLC said.

The pay gap, especially for women of color, is quite big and needs a lot of effort to close up. The NWLC is taking strong steps to ensure that “real solutions” are provided. The organization first identifies the need to revisit and strengthen “our pay discrimination laws.” NWLC pointed out that the ‘Paycheck Fairness Act’ has been around for almost 20 years, and it’s about time it becomes a law.

“Women of color are over represented among the lowest paid workers, and they deserve a raise: we must raise the federal minimum wage, which hasn’t changed in nearly a decade,” said the NWLC.

On the average, black women are paid 38% less than white men, on average, according to SurveyMonkey. There is no particular reason why Black women earn way lesser than their white counterparts, on the contrary, Black women do more work at their workplaces. The reason could be tied to racism, sexism, unconscious bias, and lesser number of black women in leadership roles.

Black Women in the Board Room

Black women account for only 3% of Board Directors with only a 1% increase in the last 5 years. For example, there are only 16 Black women on the Dow 30 Board Directors out of 345 total Board seats.

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