Thread by @womengineered

In case you didn’t know, today is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day.

Never heard of it? That’s probably because you’re thinking of the Equal Pay Day we celebrated on March 31. But for Black Women and other women of color, the wage gap is much wider than the $.80 you’ve heard about.

So what is Equal Pay Day?

#EqualPayDay is meant to symbolize how much more women need to work to earn what non-Hispanic white men do. It’s determined by the National Committee on Pay Equity how many additional days women need to work to earn what men earned the prior year.

Black women will have had to work until *today* to earn what their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts earned in 2019. That’s 226 days!

It is AUGUST. We celebrated “Equal Pay Day” in MARCH.

For women of color, the pay gap is much wider.

We need to be careful when we refer to the average w/o explicitly calling it the average.

Saying women make $.81 to a man’s dollar ignores the role that race plays. We can’t tackle the pay gap if we aren’t actively discussing and working to help WOC. #IntersectionalFeminism

And for Native American & Latina women, the wage gap is even WIDER.

There’s no single reason the wage gap is so wide for women, especially women of color, but there are a number of factors that we need to consider.

Parental leave & status: Black mothers earn $0.50 to every $1 a white father makes. Since women are more likely to earn less, they’re more likely to take time off to raise small children. When they return, they’ll make less and have had a gap in their work history.

Talk 🗣 about 🗣 your 🗣 salary!

The *ONLY* person who benefits from you keeping it a secret is your boss. Some may say it’s bad manners to bring up money, but that’s only if you’re hiding the fact that you make more money!

It’s hard to find leverage to negotiate or fight for your worth after having to struggle to even get into a field, and that’s even before you consider the lack of support.

That’s why it’s our job to keep fighting for the next person.

The pay gap is real, and it’s wider for WOC. We aren’t going to see real equality unless we’re working to protect, support, and uplift EVERYONE.

Your activism is trash if you only focus on an average (....that’s really only applicable for white women)

You’ve heard of Lean In & Lift Up, now get ready for Pull Up or Shut Up!

If you broke into a field, you know how hard it is. There’s NO benefit to not helping others do the same. If we aren’t pulling others up with us, we’re just sitting with the people tried to keep us out. 🤷‍♀️

To #womeninSTEM :
What’s some advice or tips you have or were given about negotiating and job hiring procedures?