Today, US recognize Black Women’s Equal Pay Day on July 31st: Nearly four months after US recognized Equal Pay Day for white women and a full seven months after our white non-Hispanic male counterparts have to work to make the same amount of money. To put these numbers into context, Trump has been in office LESS than seven months. I don’t know about you, but his tenure already feels like an eternity to me, and that “eternity” is less time than it takes the average black woman to earn the same as the average white man. Enraged yet? Yeah, there’s even more incendiary facts coming your way…
While the statistic that the “typical woman” only makes around 79 cents for every dollar earned by men is one that is frequently quoted, this statistic does not encompass black women and therefore cannot adequately capture the struggle for equality of ALL women. Black women only make 67 cents to every dollar made by a white man. 67 f*cking cents. This unsettling fact is independent of education (black women are now the most educated group in America), occupation, and even accounts for the fact that black women actually work more hours than white women, according to the Economic Policy Institute. So while the “79 cents” statistic is so catchy that even Obama used it during his speeches, it leaves women of color behind in the fight for equality, once again.
Black women have been left behind on two accounts: They are subject to the gender pay gap, that is admittedly decreasing, but are also vulnerable to the racial wage gap, that is actually widening. In 1979, white women and black women were at near parity when it came to wages. In 2016, 37 years later, while white women’s wages grew to 76 percent of white men’s, black women’s only grew to 67 precent. This nine percentage point difference between races illustrates how segregated our work towards equity has become. We are moving in the wrong direction.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-your-women-only-make-79-cents-to…
