Equal Pay Day for Black Women Is Today, August 13th. There’s a Reason for That

Jeanne Sahadi with CNN Business reflects on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, a day marked each year to illustrate how far into the year the average Black woman had to work to earn as much money as a white man did the previous year. The article addresses inequalities on top of what the figure reveals, such as unemployment and shortened work hours; effects of our current health and economic troubles on existing inequalities; and efforts to close the gap-because when women, especially Black women, are not paid fairly, everyone loses. Click through to watch and read the full coverage.

By Jeanne Sahadi, CNN Business

August 13th is Equal Pay Day for Black women this year. It's a measure of just how underpaid they are relative to white men.

The upshot: Black women had to work an additional seven and a half months this year on top of the 12 months they worked last year just to make as much as their White, non-Hispanic male counterparts did in 2019. That's according to the Equal Pay Today Campaign, an umbrella group of organizations advocating for pay equity. It based its estimate on the median annual earnings for full-time, year-round workers using data from the Census Bureau.

As a result, the National Women's Law Center estimates Black women lose out on roughly $1 million of income over a career.

"For Black women, they find themselves sitting at the intersection of gender and racial discrimination, and when those things are combined you'll see a bigger discrepancy in things like pay," said Shannon Williams, the director of the Equal Pay Today Campaign.

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Fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment—And Gender Equality Across the Board

As the United States considers the Equal Rights Amendment—in the first hearing of its kind in 36 years on the proposed amendment, which if passed would add the word “women” to the U.S. Constitution for the first time—we’ve been paying even more attention to stories about the fight for gender equality. From closing the gender gap and leading companies and initiatives, to fighting discrimination and gendered assumptions: Women lead the way in business, leadership roles, government, sports, and more—fighting for their own empowerment and for the voices and opportunities of girls and women for generations to come.

Why Women Definitely Need the Equal Rights Amendment, from Refinery29—“It turns out, explaining why we need the ERA is complicated. It’s not as though we don’t already have many laws against maltreatment of women, explains Wendy Murphy, director of the Women’s and Children’s Advocacy Project at New England Law School and Equal Means Equal’s legal adviser. Women are also already protected, in some sense, by the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment (“nor shall any State...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”). But the rub is that equal enforcement of any of the existing laws against sex discrimination is not required. That is because sex, specifically, is not a protected category explicitly mentioned in the Constitution the way, for example, religion or race are.”

Equal Playing Field Initiative Is Empowering Women in Sports – One World Record at a Time, from Forbes—“Enter Equal Playing Field, a grassroots nonprofit, whose mission is to challenge gender inequality in sport and to promote sports development for girls and women globally, especially in marginalized country contexts. While it is estimated that 30 million women and girls play soccer around the world, significant financial and cultural barriers continue to inhibit participation.”

How Gender Bias Impacts What We Think of Products Made by Women, from Fast Company—“‘What we’re seeing here is that woman-made goods for sale in male-typed markets are being penalized for no reason other than the fact they are made by women,’ [Stanford researcher Sarah A.] Soule says. [...] The long-term solution, say Correll and Soule, doesn’t lie in women modifying their behavior. The answer is in changing people’s stereotypical thinking at a societal level and building awareness of inherent biases that we all bring to our purchasing and other behaviors.”

AWIP Launches Female Founders Program to Close the Gender Gap in Venture Financing, from VentureBeat—“‘One of the biggest barriers to success for female founders is obtaining access to funding resources,’ said Nancy Wang, CEO and founder of AWIP. ‘Through this initiative, AWIP strives to create a safe space where all founders can interact, garner feedback and secure funding mentorship from top-tier VCs.’”

How to Close the Female Leadership Gap in Business, from Yahoo Finance—“Part of that is how do you make sure that you're supporting getting women into the pipeline in the first place? It's important to be focused on how to specifically sponsor women and identify how we can bring them up in the organization.”

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How Far Are Women Leaning In? The Number Of Female CEOs Tells Us It's Not Enough - GirlTalkHQ

GirlTalkHQ brings us a write-up from graphics and sources provided by Towergateinsurance.co.uk illustrating aspects of the gender gap in business--including age, earning capacity, barriers to success, and more. One major issue in access to leadership roles, as the findings highlight, is the way attitudes and perception affect the role gender plays in the workplace: Which traits do we consider necessary for a leader, and are women likely to embody those traits? Even with changing attitudes, it turns out that the messages women receive--particularly during our younger years--have a crucial impact on whether women will "lean in." Read below and click through for more.

girltalkhq.com - The gender pay gap is a central issue in the modern business world, but is this disparity present even in the most senior positions? Are women at the top being treated equally? If not, why do they perceive that to be? In the age of “leaning in” and women starting their own businesses at a much higher rate than men, we are still yet to see a major change in the existing corporate titans in terms of women in key positions of leadership. So just how big is the gender gap between make and female CEOs?

The following graphics break down the specifics of how the gap occurs. Let’s now look into how exactly women are faring at the top of the business world by examining common barriers, differences in opportunities for progression and pay discrepancies. When it comes to age, female CEOs and generally the same age as men.

But when it comes to earning capacity, it is a different story. On average, male CEOs earn upwards of £2 million ($2.5 million USD) more than women as of the fiscal year 2016.

Even when women do manage to achieve the same level of leadership as most male CEOs, it takes them a lot longer. On average, it takes women nearly a year and a half longer to become CEO than men. That figure is based on results from 313 companies in both the FTSE 100 and S&P; 500.

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Gender pay gap: Icelandic women take a stand

Women in Iceland came out—literally—to protest wage inequality earlier this week, in a move meant to symbolize and draw attention to the fact that women in Iceland only earn 70 percent of their male colleagues. It's a wake-up call not only in Reykjavik, but for the rest of the world: When a world leader in equality still lags this far behind in pay equity, we've all got a long way to go when it comes to true gender equality.

dw.com - Thousands of women in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, walked off the job at precisely 2:38 p.m. on Monday, October 24. They were protesting against the fact that they earn less than their male colleagues, for doing the same work with the same qualifications.

The time is not an arbitrary choice. Theoretically, from 2:38 p.m. onwards, an Icelandic woman on a normal eight-hour working day is not earning anything, because women in Iceland only earn an average of 70 percent of the income their male colleagues receive.

"There's still a significant divide between men and women in our society," Brynhildur Heithar- og Omarsdottir, the executive manager of the Iceland Women's Rights Association, told DW. The pay gap between the sexes has narrowed somewhat, she said, but the country is still very far from achieving true equality.

Protest despite top ranking

How can this be? The pictures of all the striking women in Reykjavik don't really fit with Iceland's image as a model feminist country. For years now it's been the international frontrunner on issues of economic equality. This was just affirmed by the World Economic Forum's most recent Gender Gap Report - Iceland comes top in the ranking of a total 144 countries.

"Iceland may lead the Gender Equality Index, but when it comes to the pay gap between men and women, our record is terrible," the former environment minister, Thorunn Sveinbjarnardottir, told to DW.

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Why There Are So Few Women CEOs—And What Can Be Done About It

After seeing one list from North Texas naming highest paid CEOS that only included one woman, KERA News decided to look into the disparity. Sadly, the Texas list wasn't much of an anomaly: The S&P 500 includes only 22 women CEOs, or about 4.4 percent.

We loved this account of women CEOs: their scarcity, the illusion that the problem is already solved, how more women leaders can be good for business (hint: it takes more than just one woman), and how to help prepare women for jobs at the top from the beginning of their careers. Read below, and click through to listen to an interview.

Because seeing women at top positions is wonderful, but we've still got work to do before we reach gender equality.

You know those lists that come out every year ranking the highest paid CEOs? Well, one from North Texas caught our eye: there was only one woman in the 100 top paid public company CEOs.

The data, from The Dallas Morning News and Longnecker & Associates, raised two big questions: first, is Texas an anomaly? And second, does it matter for investors if women make it to the C-suite?

Pam Patsley is used to being both a powerful and petite woman. When we meet in a 15th-floor conference room in Dallas, the first thing she does is adjust the height of her chair so her black ballet flats reach the ground.

Patsley became CEO of MoneyGram International – one of the world’s largest cash-transfer firms – in 2009, right after the financial crisis. Her job was to steer the behemoth to safety, all $1 billion-plus of revenue and 300,000 locations – and she did.

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Don't Just Get Mad at the Pay Gap—Get Ahead of It

Mind the (wage) gap: Progress toward wage equality between men and women has been slow-going in recent years, but there have been recent gains, both within companies willing to provide greater transparency and tackle inequality, and in the form of several laws recently passed and soon to be passed. But what can you do; personally; to educate yourself, know your rights, negotiate and advocate for your own fair share? Women's Health Mag has you covered. womenshealthmag.com - We’ve all heard the awful numbers: Pew research pegs the pay gap at 84 cents to a man’s dollar; a White House report has it even wider, with women at 78 cents. And apparently, it will be 118 years—nope, not an exaggeration—before men and women earn equivalent salaries for the same work, the World Economic Forum estimates. We say: not acceptable.

A growing number of companies agree and are already implementing change. Gap made its figures public in 2014; shareholders of Wal-Mart pushed for greater salary transparency last year. And global consulting firm Accenture now identifies pay discrepancies, guides women through all stages of their careers, and has pledged to grow the percentage of females it hires to at least 40 percent by 2017.

Legal reform is on the rise too: California’s Fair Pay Act, which went into effect in January, puts the burden on public and private companies to prove they haven't discriminated against women. If two people do comparable work, companies will be expected to pay them the same. “The law makes it clear that you have to look at the substance of what people do, not just their titles of positions,” says Jennifer Reisch, legal director ofEqual Rights Advocates. (The new law has employee’s backs in another way: by ensuring that they can openly discuss salaries with coworkers without fearing for their jobs.) Following California’s lead, New York enacted the Achieve Pay Equality bill last year, says Reisch, and Washington, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island to do the same soon.

Read  the rest here.