Racism and Sexism Combine to Shortchange Working Black Women

Black Women’s Equal Pay Day arrives around this time each year, marking the estimated number of extra months—roughly eight months—that a Black woman working full-time year-round in the United States must work into the current year to have earned what her white male counterpart earned during the prior year. This year, Black women will have to work well into the month of August to catch up to the wages that white men earned in 2018 alone. In concrete terms, this means that Black women experience a pay gap every day—and this gap adds up. In 2017, for example, Black women earned 61 cents for every dollar earned by white men, amounting to $23,653 less in earnings over an entire year. In the span of a 40-year career, this translates into an average lifetime earnings gap of $946,120 between Black women and white men.
The earnings chasm between Black women and white men is not new. Closing the divide, however, requires widening one’s focus beyond numerical differences that tell only part of the story. It requires developing a deeper understanding of the different factors driving the wage gap for Black women, some of which consistently devalue their experiences and work and limit their future opportunities. It requires prioritizing reforms that specifically address the unique discrimination that Black women face at the intersection of race and gender. And it requires creating greater accountability and transparency in pay practices in order to surface and tackle the most persistent problems.

Woman works at a distribution station in Staten Island, New York, February 2019. (Getty/Johannes Eisle/AFPA)

The gap in earnings between women and men, known as the gender wage gap, is fueled by multiple factors. Some of the gap can be attributed to factors that are measurable, such as differences in seniority or experience, but these types of observable factors cannot explain a portion of the gap. It is this unexplained portion of the gap that is often ascribed to reasons that are harder to quantify and detect such as discrimination. There is also a racial wage gap that has led to persistent wage disparities between workers of color and white workers. Similar to the gender wage gap, this racial wage gap is driven by explainable factors such as education levels as well as unexplained factors that could stem from bias.

Black women experience both a race and gender wage gap that reflects the intersectional reality of their daily lives. The sharpest earnings differences are between Black women and white men, who are benchmarked as the highest earners, but Black women also experience wage disparities when compared with white women and Black men. As experts have noted, it is important to understand that this race-gender wage gap consists of more than simply adding the separate numbers associated with each gap. Rather, it reflects a unique effect that results from how the combination of race and gender are perceived together.
Today, Black women work in a variety of jobs and industries at all different levels. Yet, many Black women still confront the same misperceptions about their work that have formed at the intersection of racial and gender biases for decades. As a result, Black women face unfair expectations, unique challenges, and biased assumptions about where they fit in the workplace that differ from the perceptions held about women from other racial and ethnic groups as well as men. Black women have had to navigate and at times confront competing, flawed, or incomplete narratives about their work ethic, family responsibilities, and overall value that influence decisions about what they should earn. When sexism and racism intersect in the workplace, the effect is devastating.
Black women’s work is vital to the success of their families, their communities, and the overall economy, yet Black women are confronted by unique workplace and societal barriers that undermine their ability to thrive. Disparities in Black women’s wages stem from a mix of interconnected factors, including the devaluing of the work that Black women do, the prevalence of entrenched biases rooted in race and gender bias, perceptions about the relative importance of certain types of work, occupational segregation, resistance to structural change, and more. To be effective, equal pay measures must focus on pursuing new strategies and reforms that acknowledge and tackle these problems head-on. Black women deserve more than one day of recognition about the pay gap. They deserve concrete action steps that prioritize fair pay and economic stability for themselves and their families. Equal pay for Black women is long overdue—and it cannot afford another year’s wait.

By: Jocelyn Frye