Unfree KAL White Feminism Case Study: The Wage Gap
Let’s talk about the wage gap!
You may have heard just this past Tuesday of Equal Pay Day. Equal Pay Day this year fell on March 25 [1], and symbolizes how far into the new year a woman must work to make what a man made in a comparable position the previous year. You also may have heard statistics along the lines of “women make 84 cents for every dollar men make.” Given that we’re trying to understand intersectionality here, let’s actually dive into the data and see what we can learn.
Looking at earning ratios from the US Department of Labor [2], we can begin by looking at gender in a vacuum. In other words, we will compare white women to white men, black women to black men, and so on. We see that overall, women earn 84 cents to the dollar men make, Asian women earn 81 cents, black women earn 96 cents, Hispanic women earn 87 cents, and white women earn 80 cents.
Next, let’s look at race in a vacuum, comparing the average woman to women of each race. We find that Asian women make $1.34 for every dollar made by the average woman, black women make 94 cents, Hispanic women make 79 cents, and white women make $1.09.
When we combine these two to find the effects of both race and gender on income, we get a more complete picture. For every dollar a white man makes, Asian women make 99 cents, black women make 69 cents, Hispanic women make a paltry 57 cents, and white women make 80 cents.
We can see now that it’s not nearly enough to talk about the wage gap in terms of how much women make compared to men. We also need to look at other groups which may be being systemically oppressed and see what happens at the intersections.
There isn’t robust data regarding earnings in the LGBTQ+ community, but the Human Rights Campaign carried out a survey in 2022 that can at least give us a broad understanding of how gender identity and sexual orientation may affect wages [3]. Overall, LGBTQ+ individuals made 90 cents per dollar their cishet colleagues made. When we break it down by race, Asian LGBTQ+ made $1, black LGBTQ+ made 80 cents, Hispanic LGBTQ+ made 90 cents, and white LGBTQ+ made 97 cents. This still doesn’t give us a complete picture, though, as it compares these groups to the median weekly income of a “typical worker”, rather than the median weekly income of a white man. Also, while the survey shows non-binary people and trans men both earn 70 cents and trans women earn 60 cents compared to the “typical worker,” it fails to extend its analysis to see the intersection of race and gender identity.
Even with the shortcomings of the data, we can see that there is a much larger problem than simply women being paid less than men. There is a tangled web of workplace discrimination and systemic oppression that must be addressed holistically. No amount of suggestions to individual people to negotiate for a higher salary will fix a broken system.