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The Fight for Equal Pay, Gender Parity Heats Up

NNPA NEWSWIRE — Black women sit at the nexus of race and gender and are buffeted by the twin spectres of these “isms”, and struggle upstream against a current of prejudice and bias which is compounded by gender and race. This intersectional discrimination exacerbates those gender and race gaps, stymies Black women’s ability to access educational opportunities, and has a pervasive and corrosive impact on their careers and career advancement, experts say.

Published

6 years ago

April 8, 2019

Oakland Post

By Barrington M. Salmon, Contributing Writer, Black Press USA

Despite the United States touting itself as the bastion of freedom and equality, women in this country – despite comprising 50.8 percent of the population – have always found themselves in the position of having to fight for salary and wages comparable to men.

A range of studies show some progress, but stubborn racial and gender wage gaps persist in the United States. Often, researchers point to disparities in education, the fact that many African-American women and other women of color are clustered at the lower end of the pay scale and that the minimum wage hasn’t been increased since 2007 as factors contributing to the wage gap. But what’s often downplayed or ignored is the racism and sexism that’s also at play.

Black women sit at the nexus of race and gender and are buffeted by the twin spectres of these “isms”, and struggle upstream against a current of prejudice and bias which is compounded by gender and race. This intersectional discrimination exacerbates those gender and race gaps, stymies Black women’s ability to access educational opportunities, and has a pervasive and corrosive impact on their careers and career advancement, experts say.

The wage gap has real-world consequences.

Dr. Avis Jones-DeWeever said that over their lifetimes, Black women stand to lose between $800,000 and $1 million because of these disparities.

“While the gender pay gap is an issue for all women, it is an especially wicked problem for black women,” said Dr. Jones-DeWeever, a women’s empowerment expert, international speaker and diversity consultant. “Black women are already economically disadvantaged and face double discrimination within the workforce. The additional burden of a 38 percent pay gap exacerbates the black wealth gap in America. It’s such an engrained problem. The typical Black woman will lose more than $800,000 over her lifetime, and in DC, the inequality means that Black women could lose more than $1 million.”

“A black woman has to earn a B.A. to earn what a white man with a GED would earn. It’s huge and really hardwired into the system,” continued Dr. Jones-DeWeever, who, among her many portfolios, mentors and instructs black women on how to navigate the shoals of business and achieve career and financial success. “It’s devastating because with Black college-educated women making as much as 30 percent less than their white male counterparts, that’s a huge disadvantage. That means not being able to put food on the table, buy clothes for your children, not being able to have a better quality of life or diverting money to wealth-building.”

According to the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF), median wages for black women in the United States are $36,227 per year, compared to median wages of $57,925 annually for white, non-Hispanic men. This amounts to a difference of $21,698 each year. In that same report, NPWF also highlighted that if the wage gap were eliminated, on average, a black woman working full time, year-round would have enough money for:

Two and a half years of child care
Nearly 2.5 additional years of tuition and fees for a four-year public university, or the full cost of tuition and fees for a two-year community college
159 more weeks of food for her family (three years’ worth)
More than 14 additional months of mortgage and utilities payments
22 more months of rent.

The National Women’s Law Center reports that women of every race are paid less than men, at all education levels – and it only gets worse as women’s careers progress.

“Despite the fact that women have made enormous gains in educational attainment and labor force involvement in the last several decades, unequal pay remains pervasive in 97 percent of occupations, showing that no matter what their job, women are paid less than men doing the same job in nearly every sector of work,” an NWLC fact sheet noted.

Women who work full time, year-round in the United States are paid just 80 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. This gap, which amounts to a typical loss of $10,086 per year for a working woman – or $403,440 over a 40-year career – means that women have to work 15 months … to make what men did in the previous 12-month calendar year.”

Studies by gender specialists, academics and women’s activists have statistics showing that the occupations African-American women have does not explain away the Black women’s wage gap, the NWLC said.

For example, Black women working as physicians and surgeons—a traditionally male, high wage occupation—make 54 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men working as physicians and surgeons.
Black women working as customer service representatives—a mid-wage, female dominated occupation—make 75 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men working as customer service representatives.
Black women working as construction laborers—a traditionally male, mid-wage occupation—make 81 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men working as construction laborers.
Black women working as personal care aides—a heavily female, low wage occupation—make 87 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men working as personal care aides.

In addition, Black women experience a wage gap even in occupations where they are over-represented. More than two in five African-American women (44.8 percent) are employed in one of 10 occupations. In every one of those occupations, Black women are typically paid less than white, non-Hispanic men. Among the 10 most common occupations for Black women, two of those occupations – cashiers and retail salespeople and janitors, building cleaners, maids, and housekeepers – typically pay Black women a very low wage – less than $10 per hour – while they typically pay white, non-Hispanic men substantially more.

Some solutions, NWLC experts say, include strengthening America’s pay discrimination laws, pushing harder to get Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, the Family Act and the Schedules That Work Act – all which would address the discrimination women face when they’re pregnant or caregiving and support those who need paid leave, predictable work schedules, and stability for themselves and their families.

Raising the federal minimum wage is yet another way to move towards parity. So far, six states and the District of Columbia have increased the minimum wage to $15 over the next few years.

Another solution is making the Earned Income Tax Credit more widely available to needy recipients. The EITC is a tax credit designed to offset payroll taxes and supplement wages for people working in low-wage jobs, providing the most benefits to low- to moderate-income families with children. The federal EITC lifted more than 1.2 million women 18 and older and nearly 3.5 million children out of poverty in 2017, and 28 states and the District of Columbia currently offer their own EITCs to provide an additional boost.

Dalana A. Brand, vice president of Global Total Rewards at Electronic Arts, Inc., contends that Black women can’t afford to wait, arguing in an opinion piece last year for Blavity, an Internet media company, that in the midst of the flurry of publicity, tweets, posts, hashtags and calls for change, one important element is missing.

“What often gets left out of that discussion is that the hallmark day in April does not apply to black women and other women of color,” she said. “… So, while white women caught up on April 10, black women must wait for over half the year to pass before our wages catch up to what men made a year ago.”

Brand, a highly-sought after salary strategist and career transformation coach, said black women are paid 38 percent less than white men and 21 percent less than white women but “the sad fact is that most people are either unaware or don’t care about the appalling disparity black women face with respect pay equity.”

She added that a study by LeanIn.Org, which partnered with Survey Monkey and the National Urban League, indicates that a third of Americans aren’t aware of the pay gap between black women and white men, and half of them don’t know about a similar gap between black and white women.

Much like the feminist movement, black women are being largely ignored by the equal pay movement,” she added.

Dr. Jones-DeWeever and Brand said that as career strategists and salary consultants, there are a number of things that Black women can and need to do to fight back against wage disparities. The first action is for Black women to embrace their power and value and translate that into dollars and benefits during salary negotiations.

“We don’t understand the basics of negotiating,” Dr. Jones-DeWeever said. “We have to understand our value and how to negotiate. When you’re first hired, that’s when you’re most powerful. I never accept the first offer. The first offer is only the beginning of negotiations. You’d be surprised how much money you can get. You have to negotiate for money, a package and vacation.

Black communities must also take other tacks to confront and topple this problem, they said.

“The reality of racism means that Black women will be offered less,” said Dr. Jones-DeWeever. “In terms of fixing it, we have to have conversations about financial literacy and we also have a responsibility to educate our children about their power, worth and value and empowering them.”

Brand concurred.

To date, she said, much of the equal pay movement has been focused on awareness building campaigns and encouraging women to effectively negotiate their salaries.

“While these are important steps, this is only scratching the surface,” Brand explained. “Getting to pay parity must also involve addressing the corporate systems and state and federal laws that need to change. As black women we must unify and use our collective voices to push pay equality and the racial wealth gap to the top our agenda. Black women have always been at the forefront of the push for equality in our country, whether it was civil rights or social justice, we have been critical forces for change. The equal pay movement should be no different.”

Brand and Dr. Jones-DeWeever are called in frequently to consult with Fortune 500 and other companies. They said Black women should also be actively engaged in tackling the equal pay issue within corporate America by participating in employee resource groups at work and collectively guaranteeing that the companies they work for are held accountable for addressing these issues.

African American churches, sororities and fraternities and civil society and community organizations need to actively engage in the political process and pressure elected officials to advance additional laws designed to protect against gender discrimination and pay inequality, they said, and concerned people also need to organize efforts and/or sign petitions to demand to push the government to act.

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PRESS ROOM: Top Climate Organizations React to Trump’s Executive Orders Attacking Health, Environment, Climate and Clean Energy Jobs

NNPA NEWSWIRE — Climate Action Campaign (CAC), along with partners and allies, voiced strong concerns about the executive orders and the confirmation of Lee Zeldin as the 17th Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

Published

2 weeks ago

January 31, 2025

Oakland Post

Voice concerns about the New EPA Administrator

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump wasted no time implementing the Project 2025 playbook. Within his first hours as the 47th President, he issued executive orders aimed at dismantling crucial climate, health, and economic protections, which could have dire consequences for the country and the environment. His actions of disservice to our communities on the first day of his presidency coincided with Martin Luther King Jr. Day which was meant for service and reflection. The policies introduced by President Trump, along with his new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, stand in stark contrast to the spirit of Dr. King’s commitments to service others and improve society.

Climate Action Campaign (CAC), along with partners and allies, voiced strong concerns about the executive orders and the confirmation of Lee Zeldin as the 17th Environmental Protection Agency administrator. “The new administration has moved to undo hard-earned generational progress like Justice40 that was created to ensure every American has an opportunity to be healthy and thrive,” said Dr. Margo Browne, Senior Vice President of Justice and Equity, at Environmental Defense Fund. “These actions threaten the rights of tens of millions of Americans to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and use products free of toxic chemicals, particularly those people whose zip code or race add undue burdens.

We must stay focused. Leaders change, but our work remains the same. And we will do everything we can to uphold the progress made with our partners and allies and to uplift the people on the frontlines fighting for equity every day.” “As we enter into an era of weaponized phrases and issues, we must remember that environmental justice means that all people should have equitable access to a healthy, sustainable, and resilient environment,” said Leslie Fields, Chief Federal Officer, WE ACT For Environmental Justice. “Trump’s day one acts – including rescissions of nearly 80 vital executive orders while adding dozens of new, anti-democratic orders – roll back popular policies that promote clean, renewable, and affordable energy. These actions also place vulnerable communities in even greater danger from pollution and the dire, real-time consequences of the climate crisis. In the face of these assaults, we will not stop pursuing justice.”

“The President of the United States is elected to lead and protect all Americans,” said Ben Jealous, Executive Director, Sierra Club. “Donald Trump promised to be a president who fights for working families, but his bluster of action shows he’s fighting harder to protect corporate polluters and their profits, all at the expense of our health, our safety, and our jobs. The American people want cheaper energy bills, safe drinking water, and clean air. Donald Trump should listen and offer actual solutions instead of exploiting their pain for political gain while he further lines the pockets of the wealthiest instead of American workers.”

On the Confirmation of Lee Zeldin, 17th administrator of the EPA:

“Lee Zeldin’s confirmation as EPA administrator is a catastrophic blow to the health of Americans, the climate, and the economy,” said Margie Alt, Director, Climate Action Campaign. “Under Zeldin’s leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency will no longer protect the American people and our communities – it will protect polluters. Zeldin’s public statements and record make it clear he will implement Trump’s anti-science, anti-clean energy Project 2025 agenda, prioritizing the interests of oil and gas CEOs at the expense of the clean air, water, and energy that Americans overwhelmingly support and rely on. Americans deserve an EPA administrator who will prioritize the health and safety of families over polluter profits. Zeldin’s confirmation is a tragic failure for all Americans.”

“The new head of the EPA must ensure that neither he nor the President denies vulnerable communities their most basic rights—the right to breathe clean air, drink water free from poison, and live on land that does not make them sick,” said Mustafa Santiago Ali, Executive Vice President, National Wildlife Federation. “Environmental Justice is not a privilege; it is the foundation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To neglect it is to abandon the people who need protection the most.” “Confirming a director who normalizes baseless conspiracies, while failing to earnestly accept the facts of climate change, is a threat to the health of everyone in the United States and especially the most vulnerable Justice 40 communities,” said KeShaun Pearson, Executive Director, Memphis Community Against Pollution. “Lee Zeldin is the antithesis of environment and climate justice. We are amid a climate crisis that demands a protector, not a big oil pawn.” Climate Action Campaign is a vibrant coalition of advocacy organizations working together to drive ambitious, durable federal action to cut carbon pollution, address the climate crisis, advance environmental justice, and accelerate the transition to clean energy.

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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2025 We Proclaim It

NNPA NEWSWIRE — In the history of this country, in the ongoing fight against racial oppression, against a white supremacist narrative, and against the racial apartheid laws that were passed and upheld, there have always been gear-shifting moments when individual people have taken a stand.

Published

2 weeks ago

January 31, 2025

Oakland Post

By Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead

Former Georgia Representative Julian Bond and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver once said that when Rosa Parks chose to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama, somewhere in the universe, a gear in the machinery shifted, and everything changed.

A gear-shifting moment.

In the history of this country, in the ongoing fight against racial oppression, against a white supremacist narrative, and against the racial apartheid laws that were passed and upheld, there have always been gear-shifting moments when individual people have taken a stand. It happened in 1850, when Harriet Araminta Tubman, a year after her self-emancipation, chose to go back to Baltimore, Maryland, to help lead her niece and her niece’s two children to freedom. A gear shifted. It happened in 1770, when Crispus Attucks, a Black and Indigenous sailor and whaler, chose to get involved with the growing kerfuffle in Boston. In 1864, when the 22nd Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops marched from Camp William Penn through the streets of Philadelphia on their way to fight, gear shifted.

When Mamie Till told them in 1955 to leave her son’s casket open so that the world could see what those white men had done to her son, a gear in the machinery of the universe shifted, it happened again in 1966 with Kwame Ture and Mukasa Dada’s declaration of Black Power after the “March Against Fear.” In 2014, after police officers killed unarmed Eric Garner in New York and unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Black people came together under the banner and hashtag of Black Lives Matter to march, protest, and demand change. Gears shift when we choose to fight, when we choose to stand up, and when we refuse to back down. The moral arc of the universe does not bend on its own toward justice, it bends because we push it and because we are willing to continue to do it until change does happen.

In 1926, when Dr. Carter G. Woodson—the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the son of formerly enslaved parents, a former sharecropper and miner, and the second Black person to receive a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University—sent out a press release announcing the first Negro History Week, a gear shifted. He chose February because the Black community was already celebrating the historic achievements on the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (2/12) and Frederick Douglass (2/14). Dr. Woodson did not wait for the celebration of our history to be proclaimed, he proclaimed it. He did not wait for someone to permit him to celebrate what we had contributed to this country, he celebrated it. Dr. Woodson understood that Black parents had been teaching their children our history since we arrived in this country. Our stories and achievements had been carried by the wind and buried in the soil. It had been whispered as bedtime stories, spoken from the pulpits on Sunday mornings, and woven throughout our songs and poems of resistance and survival. America did not have to tell us who we were to this country; we told them.

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America did not have to tell us that we built this country, our fingerprints are etched into the stone. America does not have to proclaim Black History Month, we proclaim it. We live in the legacy of Dr. Woodson, and as we have done for 98 years, we will celebrate who we are and all that we have accomplished. We stand at the intersection of the past and the future; what we do at this moment will determine how the next gear shifts. The 2025 Black History Month theme is African Americans and Labor, which focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people and the transformational work that we have done throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. We are celebrating our visible labor—from the work we did back then to build the White House to the work we do right now to hold the White House accountable, from repairing the roads to teaching in our schools, from stocking shelves to packing and unloading trucks; from working in the federal government to our ongoing labor in the state and local offices—and, our invisible labor—from raising and teaching our children to caring for our aging family members, from finding ways to practice revolutionary self-care to finding ways to hope beyond hope in a country that frequently targets and terrorizes Black people. We bear witness to what it means to work hard every day and to get sick and tired of working so hard.

As the president of ASALH, one of the many legacy keepers of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, I am excited to proclaim and uplift the start of Black History Month 2025. I believe that ASALH is a lighthouse that you do not notice until you need it. When boats are caught in a storm or fog, they look for the lighthouse to help guide them safely back to the shore. We have been standing as a lighthouse proudly proclaiming the importance of Black History and helping people to understand that it is only through studying the quilted narrative of our historical journey that one can see the silences, blind spots, hypocrisies, and distortions of American history. We do not celebrate because we are given permission, we celebrate because we are the permission givers. We do not wait for Black History Month to be proclaimed, we proclaim it. We do not wait to be seen, we see ourselves. We do not have to be told the story of America because we are writing it, we are telling it, we are owning it, and we are pointing the way to it. We invite you to join us as we once again celebrate and center the incredible contributions that Black people have made to this beautiful and imperfect nation.

Dr. Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead is the 30^th person and the eighth woman to serve as the national president of ASALH. She is a professor of Communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland and the host of the award-winning radio show “Today with Dr. Kaye” on WEAA, 88.9 FM. She is the author of the recently released “my mother’s tomorrow: dispatches from Baltimore’s Black Butterfly” and a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She lives in Baltimore with her family.

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Black Reaction to Trump DEI Blame on The Plane Crash

NNPA NEWSWIRE — Before the completed investigation officially began, President Trump laid the blame for the accident on the Army helicopter. He felt it should have been flying at a different altitude, higher or lower, than the jet

Published

2 weeks ago

January 30, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

“We are dealing with a vicious adversary,” according to Rev. Al Sharpton, the head of the National Action Network speaking of President Donald Trump and his hate diatribe Thursday morning. President Trump blamed DEI, the Obama and Biden administrations along with former Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg for the deadly midair crash over the Potomac last night. 67 people died after an accident between an American Airline Plane and an Army Helicopter. When asked why President Trump thought diversity had something to do with the crash, he said,” I have common sense and most people don’t.” Reverend Al, who is investigating the impact of the Trump anti-DEI efforts in retail believes Trump is “obsessed with race” and he is a “raw, insensitive, uncaring man.”

Former Secretary Buttigieg immediately went to social media making a statement saying, Trump should be leading, not lying.” Buttigieg also fact-checked Trump saying we grew Air Traffic Control and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.” Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) / X During Trump’s rant on DEI at the White House briefing room podium, he asserted, “the FAA’s diversity push includes a focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says, the FAA says, people with severe disabilities, the most underrepresented segment of the workforce, and they want them in, and they want them. They can be air traffic controllers. I don’t think so.” Trump went on to say the prior administrations felt those departments were “too white.”

According to reports FAA staffing has been an issue since Inauguration Day January 20, 2025. Also, Elon Musk, the head of the White House Office of Government Efficiency is reported to have asked the head of the FAA to resign. Musk FAA Ax Former Black Obama Administration Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx exclusively told this reporter after the Trump statements,” I would caution against any definitive conclusions until that work [investigation] is done by trained, experienced professionals.”

Foxx, who also worked as a transportation consultant in the Biden administration admonished the Trump address saying, “There is no sugar-coating the tragic midair collision that occurred last night. In my experience, safety has always been the number one focus of the Federal Aviation Administration.” Foxx says there is a safety mission to be completed after this tragedy. “There is a well-practiced root cause process that has been taken in the past. It should be used now with competent professionals. A comprehensive, fact-based investigation will answer the many questions we all have. It would also help guard against future accidents of this type,” according to the transportation expert.

Before the completed investigation officially began, President Trump laid the blame for the accident on the Army helicopter. He felt it should have been flying at a different altitude, higher or lower, than the jet. When it comes to the president’s corrosive comments, reaction has been swift from the civil rights community. In a statement from the President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Derrick Johnson, “The NAACP is disgusted by this display of unpresidential, divisive behavior.” Johnson told this reporter in a text message, “The President has made his decision to put politics over people abundantly clear as he uses the highest office in the land to sow hatred rooted in falsehoods instead of providing us with the leadership we need and deserve.”

As Trump worked to distract with his words on DEI, the questions still abound as to what caused the deadly plane crash. Former Sec. Foxx, immediately following the fatal crash last night said. “My worst fear is that something happened with the avionics. I hope and expect that this is not the case. But most aircraft these days run in a form of GPS. Could a warning system have failed? But then, how can two systems fail? That leads to some even more grave concerns about interference with the systems. There are many other potential causes.”