Today is Nobody’s Equal Pay Day
A call for intersectional pay equity
The National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) launched Equal Pay Day in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men’s and women’s wages. Twenty-five years later, pay equity is still an issue.
In 2020, American women earned on average 82¢ for every dollar earned by men. Women had to work an extra 83 days, until today March 24, 2021, to earn the same amount as men earned in 2020. As a result, today is #EqualPayDay2021.
The reality is, today is nobody’s Equal Pay Day.
Fixing the gender pay gap ironically makes the pay equity issue worse by masking unaddressed pay equity gaps for people with overlapping identities. The groups who are overlooked are the same groups who are hurt the most by the pay disparity in the first place. Intersectional analyses illuminate the real pay gap but have gained far less awareness and governance. It is currently optional for employers to address pay equity gaps. Given recent rates of progress, we will have to wait 165 years to celebrate a true Equal Pay Day in the U.S.
Intersectional pay equity is about closing pay gaps between groups defined by overlapping identities
Intersectional — taking into account people’s overlapping identities and experiences in order to understand the complexity of the prejudices they face.
(concept by Kimberlé Crenshaw, 30 years ago)
Delivering on intersectional pay equity means closing all the pay gaps between groups defined by overlapping identities. For example, one focus is to close the pay gap between Black women and white men, not Black women and men in general.
Without committing to intersectional pay equity, NONE OF US (e.g. nobody) will escape this rathole of pay equity doom.
- Despite its broad title, Equal Pay Day promoters primarily call attention to pay differences based on gender. There are also significant pay equity gaps in the U.S. based on race, disability, and sexual orientation, and for people not male or female (the gender binary).
- Employers have data on race/ethnicity and binary gender. Nevertheless, Equal Pay Day’s focus on gender can lead employers to analyze and close only their gender pay gap.
- Employer gender pay audits disguise the race and gender double pay penalty for women of color and completely ignore the pay equity gap for men of color.
- Surprisingly, employer gender pay audits also do not reveal the full pay gap between white women and white men. This is because women’s pay is compared to average male pay which combines the lower pay for men of color with higher pay for white men.
- An intersectional pay equity approach is the only way we can all achieve true pay equity.
Employers should measure and close their pay equity gaps
Compensation discrimination by race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability is illegal in the U.S. In 2018–2020, PayScale took a survey of people with bachelor’s degrees. Comparing people with the same background and position, they found that Black women earn 97¢, Black men earn 98¢, and white women earn 98¢ compared to every $1 earned by white men.
Some may think a 2–3% pay gap is quite small between employees performing similar work. However, a 3% pay gap over a forty-year career leads to a loss of over $1 million for a Black woman compared to an average white man. Delivering equal pay for equal work would make a profound difference for families of color who face a staggering gap in wealth compared to white families.
In the U.S., most employers have all the data they need to perform a pay equity analysis by gender and race. This is because employers with more than one hundred employees are required to collect employee gender and race/ethnicity data to comply with federal Equal Employment Opportunity law. Many smaller employers also follow suit.
Nonetheless, very few companies measure their pay equity gap because they are not mandated to do so. In 2020, Just Capital took a survey of the 928 largest, public U.S. corporations. They found only 21% perform a voluntary gender pay equity analysis. Employers who were willing to disclose their pay gap show they are comfortable with women earning 2% less than men for doing the same job. I couldn’t find any statistics on the rate that companies perform any other types of pay equity analysis.
The pay equity gap will not be closed until citizens require employers to deliver on intersectional pay equity. For now, that means closing the intersectional gender AND racial pay gap.
An intersectional analysis is the only way to reveal the true pay equity gap
Drawing on my skills as a former co-queen of the high school math club, I will show why employers should perform intersectional pay equity analyses, not gender pay equity analyses. To illustrate why an intersectional pay equity analysis is the only way to go, consider a hypothetical employer who decides to examine a group of employees at the same level and job function. For this example, I’ll use the same subset of groups introduced earlier; Black women, Black men, white women, and white men.
Get ready for some numbers! Don’t worry, I’ll make it possible to follow even for the math-averse.
Imagine this fictitious company decides to examine only the gender pay gap. To find women’s average pay, the lower pay of Black women is averaged with the higher pay of white women. To find men’s average pay, the lower pay of Black men is averaged with the higher pay of white men. The analysis finds that women earn 97.5¢ for every 99¢ earned by men who are at the same level and job function. The resulting gender pay gap is 1.5%. The company increases women’s pay by 1.5% to close the gap. The result eliminates the gender pay gap, but still leaves Black men, Black women, and white women earning less than white men by 2%, 1.5%, and 0.5% respectively.
This company could instead focus on closing the racial pay gap using the same math. They would provide all Black employees a 1.5% pay increase. The result would eliminate the racial pay gap, but still leaves Black men, Black women, and white women earning less than white men by 0.5%, 1.5%, and 2% respectively.
Now, imagine the same company wants to close both the gender pay gap and the racial pay gap. They provide all the women a 1.5% pay increase and provide all the Black people a 1.5% pay increase. The result eliminates the racial pay gap AND the gender pay gap, but still leaves Black men and white women earning less than white men by 0.5%. The employer still has not delivered intersectional pay equity
To deliver on equal pay for all intersectional groups, the company must close the pay gaps between each intersectional subgroup. The company increases white women’s pay by 2%, Black men’s pay by 2%, and Black women’s pay by 3%. Now, Black men, Black women, white women, and white men all receive equal pay for equal work.
As demonstrated, an intersectional approach is the only way to truly identify and then fix the multiple pay equity gaps. However, it costs more money to close intersectional pay equity gaps than to close just the gender pay gap, even though it will pay off in improved company financial performance in the long-run. Also, closing the gender pay gap is the primary public rallying cry. Hence, companies with only a short-term focus are happy to spend less money fixing only the gender pay gap. Unfortunately, closing the gender pay gap doesn’t close the pay equity gap for anyone.
Who else is left out of company pay equity analyses?
We’ve discussed how race is often left out of pay equity analyses, despite the availability of employee data on race. Disability status and sexual orientation also lead to unequal pay in the workplace but are excluded from employer pay equity audits.
Though wage gaps persist for people with disabilities, it is illegal for employers to ask employees for their disability status. This is due to the long history of harsh employment discrimination against people with disabilities.
Wage gaps also persist for LGBTQIA+ people. Employers can legally collect data about employee sexual orientation. For good reason, employees are hesitant to share their sexual orientation because it is still legal to discriminate against LGBT people in 28 states.
The history of discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people also leads companies to collect binary male/female gender data. Some states including California now mandate the collection of more gender data categories including male, female, and nonbinary. The concept of gender equity also focuses on cis-gender people, often excluding or miscounting transgender people.
Overall, the lack of demographic data about LGBTQIA+ employees and employees with disabilities prevents employers from conducting a fully intersectional company pay equity analysis. We must continue to advance workplace inclusion for people with disabilities and LGBTQIA+ people. They too deserve fulfilling (or any) careers and pay equity.
The national pay equity conversation focuses on gender pay equity above all
Once you notice the unnecessary and exclusionary focus on gender within the national pay equity conversation, you start to see it everywhere.
This misdirected emphasis on gender shows up in titles like “Quantifying America’s Gender Wage Gap by Race/Ethnicity”. Given the staggering wealth gap between white families and families of color, wouldn’t “Quantifying America’s Racial Wage Gap by Gender” be the more appropriate title? This would emphasize the people who are most harmed by pay inequity.
California’s new pay data reporting legislation requires all employers to report on pay by gender and race/ethnicity. Yet, it is oddly framed as gender pay equity legislation. “Despite significant progress made in California in recent years to strengthen California’s equal pay laws, the gender pay gap persists. […] Pay discrimination is not just a women’s issue but also harms families and the state’s economy.”
Looking at Google search trends, “gender pay gap” was searched over 50x more than “racial pay gap” throughout 2020, even amidst the surge in visibility for the Black Lives Matter movement.
The NCPE, the originator of Equal Pay Day, brings attention to the pay gap for women in general as well as women of color. Nevertheless, the introductory sentence of the NCPE’s Race and Pay Equity Policy Brief insinuates the superior importance of gender over race in pay equity conversations. “Racial-ethnic minorities are a far smaller percentage of the labor force than are women.” (see below for a comment from the NCPE)
In a country where white families are up to eight times wealthier than families of color, a focus on the gender pay gap and not the racial pay gap starts to feel like part of the Great White Heist instead of a social justice movement.
The focus on pay equity for women above all others is due to White Feminism
Equal Pay Day and other gender pay gap publicity efforts trap the conversation within the realm of gender. Watch out! This stress on gender above all is a feature of exclusionary White Feminism.
“White Feminism exists to promote the comfort and safety of middle-class and affluent White women.[…] It’s hard to muster up energy to fight issues like the infamous wage gap when so many of my amazing sisters of color can’t get decent medical care, our babies are dying at rates typical of developing countries, our partners are sitting jail for no good reason at all, and we are all traumatized from living in a racist society.”
There is a long history of harmful White Feminism in the women’s rights movement. Famous, white, female suffragists, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton took issue that Black men won the (theoretical) right to vote before white women. They reacted with slurs about the lower intelligence of Black people and their inclination to drink alcohol. Black suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper articulated her position:
“When it was a question of race, I let the lesser question of sex go. But the white women all go for sex, letting race occupy a minor position.”
As a middle-class, white woman, I am going to speak directly to my peers. We’re acting as if we think there isn’t enough pay to go around. Our singular focus on the gender wage gap hurts our fellow humans who are Black, Indigenous, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, or have disabilities. They are harmed the most by pay inequity.
If the feminist pay equity movement was about the equitable share of wealth and power in America, our top priority would be to deliver pay equity for women AND men of color. Pay equity for white women would be last.
I worry that white women are not willing to shift the focus from gender pay equity to intersectional pay equity. I could say the joke is on us. As shown through math, a singular focus on gender pay equity doesn’t even lead to pay equity for white women compared to white men. However, our obsession with gender pay equity hurts men and women of color the most.
White women: we have allowed corporations to make us feel like we are living in a world of scarcity. They encourage us to fight against the people who have been hurt the most in American society. Know this:
There is plenty of wealth in the world to pay all people equitably and to support all people in pursuing fulfilling careers.
Closing the gender pay gap doesn’t close the pay gap for anybody. We can only achieve equal pay for all if we commit to an intersectional approach.
A call for a focus on #IntersectionalPayEquity
As shown through math, closing the gender pay gap doesn’t fix the pay equity gap for anyone, including white women. By the same math, today is nobody’s Equal Pay Day, not even the white women who created it.
Going forward, we must move the pay equity conversation away from its harmful focus on gender. We should require employers to use an intersectional approach to pay equity by including both race and gender today. This is the surest path to deliver pay equity justice to those who are hurt the most by our inequitable society.
“My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.” — Flavia Dzodan
What you can do to help today:
- Call for #IntersectionalPayEquity on Equal Pay Day, instead of bringing attention to the gender pay gap. One way is to recommend and share this article and tag it with #IntersectionalPayEquity.
- Amplify intersectional Equal Pay Days
- Encourage more intersectional Equal Pay Days — Advocacy organizations could launch equal pay days that bring attention to pay equity gaps for men of color, LGBTQIA+ people, and people with disabilities.
- Ask your Senator to support the #EqualityAct
- Ask your representatives to support the #PaycheckFairness Act
- Ask your employer to close intersectional pay gaps — Ha ha ha!
By calling attention to intersectional pay equity, and diverting attention from gender pay equity, I hope we can accelerate the time to when we celebrate the ultimate Equal Pay Day for all on December 31.
Many thanks to all of the volunteer editors who helped this article come to life. I reached out to the National Partnership for Women & Families (NPWF), but they did not provide any comment. On April 1, Carolyn York, Secretary-Treasurer of NCPE provided this comment:
“NCPE’s principles begin with the forceful statement, ‘True equality for the millions of women and minorities in the workforce will not be achieved until there is pay equity.’ Throughout its nearly 50-year history, NCPE has unequivocally advocated for eliminating sex and race-based wage disparities, with a focus on eradicating disparities caused by unfair pay in jobs held primarily by women and/or people of color. We join with labor, women’s, civil rights, and religious organizations who share our goal of creating a more just and prosperous society for all by eliminating pay discrimination.”
