Black women’s equal pay day highlights massive pay gap
While women overall caught up on April 10 this year, black women were still working—until August 7—just to catch up.
Most people are at least slightly familiar with Equal Pay Day, the point at which women catch up to men’s earnings for the previous year.
But few realize that while women overall caught up on April 10 this year, black women were still working—until August 7—just to catch up.
According to LeanIn, more than 30 percent of Americans don’t even realize that there’s a pay gap. In addition, they aren’t aware of how big the pay gap is for black women, who earn 38 percent less than white men—and 21 percent less than white women. The report points out that black women also receive less support from managers and are promoted more slowly.
That kind of a pay handicap has lots of repercussions—since more than 80 percent of black mothers are the primary breadwinners for their families, the report says, not only do lower earnings mean less money for the families they support, they translate to an average of almost $870,000 over the course of a career.
And of course that has plenty of repercussions for retirement as well.
Yet, says the report, people are “overly optimistic” about black women’s workplace conditions.
About half of white men, it says, think there are no longer obstacles to advancement for black women, but only 14 percent of black women agree. In addition, nearly 70 percent of people who are not black think that racism, sexism or both are uncommon in their company. Compare that with the 64 percent of black women who say they’ve experienced discrimination at work.
The astounding thing is how little awareness there is over the gap and its size—even in the workplace.
“The lack of awareness about the pay gap at their own workplace, particularly among hiring managers—two thirds of whom say there is none—is an insight we hope drives organizations to take action,” Sarah Cho, director of research at SurveyMonkey, is quoted saying in the report.
Cho adds, “Conducting a pay equity study is a powerful way to bring this topic into clear terms, but we also hope these data spark curiosity within companies to measure perceptions about inclusion, so they can build broader programs and policies to help drive meaningful change that lasts.”