Accelerating wage justice on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day

July 27 is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, but it does not celebrate that Black women earn what they are owed. We are far from that. Indeed, at our current pace of reform, we will have to wait over a century before Black Women’s Equal Pay marks wage justice for Black women.

This year, Black women will have to work over 19 months (into July) to make what men made in 2022. Census data confirms that Black women working full-time, year round make on average $.67 on the dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men. These comparative earnings shrink to $.64 on the dollar if we include part-time, migrant, and seasonal Black women workers. Black women are losing an average of $900,000 over their professional lives. This is the kind of money that fuels educational advancement, home ownership and intergenerational family wealth.

Many exploitative forces are at play, including discrimination, wage theft, suppression of labor organizing, caregiver discrimination and denied paid family leave. Another key driver of this wage gap is occupational segregation: the concentration of women—particularly women of color—in low paid and undervalued jobs. Black women are overrepresented in low-paid occupations and underrepresented in higher-wage jobs, which contributes to and exacerbates economic insecurity. Over four in 10 Black women (42 percent) make $15 per hour or less, compared to just 13 percent of white men. The figures are far worse in specific states. In Mississippi, for example, women comprise 69.2 percent of the state’s low-paid workforce.

This is a moment of critical opportunity to end the devaluation of Black women’s labor. 

State and national coalitions are incubating groundbreaking wage justice reforms, forcing the posting of salary ranges, raising the minimum wage, and abolishing the subminimum wage in tipped industries. In the past decade, 42 states have passed 73 stronger pay equity laws. Dozens more have been introduced in 2023 in the states and at the federal level to address the myriad unlawful and unfair practices depressing Black womens’ wages. These include federal bills like the Paycheck Fairness Act addressing pay discrimination, the Fair Pay Act addressing occupational segregation, the Be HEARD in the Workplace Act combating workplace harassment, and the Healthy Families Act setting national paid sick and safe day requirements. 

The importance of federal legislation cannot be overstated. As dozens of states enact progressive laws, several are rolling back protections. For example, Mississippi’s new misnamed “Equal Pay for Equal Work” Act, which went into effect July 1, 2022, only protects workers against sex (not race) discrimination in pay and is otherwise narrower than the federal protections available to workers in Mississippi. Among other provisions that will worsen the pay gap for Black women, the law expressly allows employers to pay a woman in Mississippi less than a man for equal work based on her salary history, even though other states are banning this practice carrying discrimination from one job to another. 

This state and federal policy reform push combines with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the exclusion of Black women from high paid work. Historic investments (topping $4 trillion) in infrastructure have been made recently through federal legislation, including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. America’s current infrastructure workforce is overwhelmingly white and male — a reflection of inequities in current hiring, training and job-retention practices. This extraordinary investment creating new jobs must be leveraged to ensure they are more hospitable to women workers. This also presents a unique opportunity for states to ensure more Black women and other underrepresented groups have access to higher-wage jobs.  

To realize the potential of these opportunities to accelerate progress for Black women and other workers, communities across the country must flex their power as voters, workers, advocates and careful monitors of federal funds. Now is the moment to support dozens of groundbreaking wage justice and worker organizing policy reforms gaining momentum across the nation.  Consider joining local and regional committees monitoring federal infrastructure projects to ensure Black women benefit. Join community action teams supporting pay transparency and fairness, safety from harassment and working families. We don’t have a century to wait for Black women’ s wage justice. Together, we can accelerate progress so that, one day very soon, Black Women’s Equal Pay Day means just what it says. 

Noreen Farrell is the executive director of Equal Rights Advocates and National Chair of Equal Pay Today; Cassandra Welchlin is the executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable and an Equal Pay Today member.