Time to Erase the Pay Gap Once and For All
Barrington Salmon Florida Phoenix Apr 2, 2024 Updated Apr 3, 2024
In 2024, most American women go to work, put in their hours, deal with a bunch of sexist crap and on payday receive a considerably lighter check than men who perform the same tasks.
Why? Because of centuries-old wage and salary disparities that are only getting worse.
An assortment of reports and studies show that at the current rate, women will not reach pay equity with white men until 2038, 2144 or 2153, depending on the U.S. state.
For every dollar that white, non-Hispanic men make, women working full time earn between 82 to 84 cents. Yet this data point is more complex because in 2022, Black women earned 67 cents for every dollar earned by white men, but the wage gap widened to 65 cents on the dollar for Black women who held doctorate degrees compared to white men with the same education.
According to analysis from the National Women’s Law Center, this gap translates to a loss of $53,334 a year, and more than $2.1 million over the course of a Black woman’s 40-year career.
More generally, over their work lives, Black women without doctorates stand to lose between $800,000 and $1 million because of these gender disparities. July 27 is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day – marking how far into any given year Black women must work to be paid what white, non-Hispanic men were paid last year alone. The wage gap costs Black women $1,891 per month, $22,692 per year and $907,680 over a 40-year career.
The disparities in wages and salaries are at a whole other level for Black women.
Larger numbers of Black women are earning more doctoral degrees than ever before, as illustrated by the 30% increase in the number of Black women doctoral recipients in 2019 versus 2010, according to the National Science Foundation.
But that has also come at a cost.
The National Women’s Law Center said while more Black women getting higher degrees is positive, there may also be a financial setback for those women receiving higher degrees because they are also burdened with outsized student loans since they’re in school longer.
In the free state of Florida, women don’t fare much better.
Florida ranks in the bottom third as it relates to the gender wage gap. In a 2022 Employment and Earning index from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), Florida earned a D+ and ranked 44th on women’s labor force participation rate.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 global pandemic also had a deleterious effort on women’s fortunes.
In a 2023 commentary from Fortune, Katica Roy, the CEO of Pipeline, wrote that “we often forget to mention how the pandemic has obliterated decades of progress toward gender equity, thus draining $3.1 trillion from our economy … and there are still 1.8 million women missing from the labor force since the start of the pandemic … the gender pay gap widened on average by five cents due to the pandemic.”
The cost to women and their families is considerable. One 2022 study found that Florida’s wage gap costs women nearly $17 billion a year. Another pinned the wage gap loss for women across the United States at more than $500 billion a year.
But there is a universe of solutions available if politicians, power brokers, policymakers, the corporate elite, women and the public really seek fundamental and far-reaching change.
These include women asking for higher starting salaries and negotiating when offered a job; bumping up the minimum wage to lift up those women bunched in the lowest-paying jobs; introducing or strengthening salary transparency laws; and having pay equity audits.
In the fall of 2023, for example, the Miami Herald reported that “Florida International University has been accused of gender pay discrimination against 163 women. While the Miami-based public university said it disagreed with the findings, it will pay $575,000 in back pay and interest to settle the allegation. That works out to $3,527.61 for each woman that the U.S. Department of Labor said was shorted on pay.”
Other solutions include creating ways for women to move up into leadership and senior positions in companies and organizations; providing high-quality, affordable and accessible child care; improving gender, racial and ethnic equity by elevating women and women of color in leadership positions; promoting diversity, equity and inclusion; and prioritizing accessibility in hiring across federal and corporate workforces.
Lastly, businesses must broaden and support paid family and medical leave, paid sick leave, workplace flexibility, overtime protections and predictable scheduling, and expand women’s access to capital by multiplying resources and support for women entrepreneurs.
Ensuring, advancing and protecting women’s rights is a moral imperative and a central tenet of basic human dignity. And at the end of the day, when women – half of America’s population – thrive, families blossom, economies prosper and communities across the nation thrive as well.