When It Takes Twice the Time to Earn the Same Dollar How Can Black Women Break the Glass Ceiling?

Today, Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, we’re reminded that all women are still fighting to be paid the same as men, and women of color have a particularly long way to go to fair wages.

The gender wage gap means women must work into the next year to earn what white non-Hispanic men earn by the end of the current year. And how long it takes women to catch up largely depends on their race and ethnic background. Today’s Equal Pay Day for black women is based on the fact that they make $0.63 to the dollar that white non-Hispanic men do — so it has taken them until today to earn what those men earned by December 31, 2017, according to Equalpaytoday.org. That’s more than half the following year.

Comparatively, the average for all women is $0.80 to men’s dollar. Native American women and Latina women earn even less than black women, at $0.57 and $0.54, respectively.

One explanation behind this gap is that black women are not well represented in the highest-paying industries, like business and technology. Differences in employment by occupation and industry account for nearly half of the overall gender wage gap, according to a 2017 report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).

The 62.2 percent of black women in the labor force frequently face occupational segregation that severely narrows their career and salary options. Of those who work, 28% hold service occupations — personal care aides, housekeepers, or cooks, all of which are at the lower end of the payscale. Just 11.2 percent of black women are employed in business, management or finance, which are the best-compensated roles.

It’s been shown that higher education is not enough to close the racial wealth gap. Alternative methods of funneling diverse, hard-working, talented women into the corporate workplace are crucial to offering significant opportunities for their advancement and ultimately their trajectory toward equal pay.

For Brittany Bruno, associate client support consultant at INova Payroll and former WOS-ADP program participant, her training through Workforce Opportunity Services was just the boost she needed to advance in her career. “I had a B.S. in Occupational Therapy, but I wanted to work in HR, and going back to school for four years wasn’t ideal or financially feasible,” she says. “With the workshops that I took through WOS, which covered everything from relationship building to customer service skills, coupled with working full-time at ADP as a WOS consultant, more than prepared me for my transition into an HR role.”

Since Workforce Opportunity Services was founded in 2005, 43 percent* of its program participants have been women, with 91 percent of those individuals being women of color. This has benefited both women and WOS’ corporate partners because increased diversity in the workplace correlates with higher performance. Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.

The more education and training one receives, the better the chances they have to attain professional success and financial independence. This helps not only the individual, but the company they work for and the equality of men and women across the nation.

*This percentage includes our work with veterans. Women represent 10 percent of the veteran population, whereas 20 percent of the veterans WOS has served are women.

For more information about Workforce Opportunity Services, please visit wforce.org or email info@wforce.org.