You may have heard about Equal Pay Day being marked on April 10th of 2018 as the day that symbolized how far women had to work into 2018 just to catch up with what men earned in 2017. However, what most people don’t know is that that date does not take into account the disparities that disproportionately affect black women.
For black women, Equal Pay Day is August 7th. That’s more than seven extra months into the year that black women have to work in order to earn what their white male counterparts earned last year alone.
On average, black women are paid 38 percent less than white men and 21 percent less than white women.
Considering how large the wage gap is for black women, there is a striking lack of awareness in America about this inequity: according to research conducted by LeanIn.Org and SurveyMonkey in partnership with the National Urban League, one in three Americans is not aware of the pay gap between black women and white men, and half of Americans are not aware of the gap between black women and white women.
Within companies, employees and hiring managers are also not cognizant of the gap. “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,” said Sarah Cho, Director of Research at SurveyMonkey.
To increase awareness about the pay gap affecting black women, LeanIn.Org—an initiative of the Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation that helps women achieve their ambitions and works to create an equal world—is launching #38PercentCounts, the second of three public awareness efforts rooted in the idea that equal pay matters.* Lean In has partnered with other companies known for pushing for equality in the workplace—including adidas, Lyft, P&G, and Reebok—to ask consumers to think about the impact of getting 38 percent less as they make everyday purchases on August 7.
Source: www.forbes.com
