Economy

Fight for Equal Pay, Gender Parity Heats Up

WASHINGTON INFORMER — 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.

Published

5 years ago

April 10, 2019

BlackPressUSA.com

By Barrington M. Salmon, Special to The Informer via NNPA Newswire

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.

This article originally appeared in the Washington Informer.

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Activism

Community Celebrates Historic Oakland Billboard Agreements

We, the Oakland Billboard Economic Development Coalition, which includes Oakland’s six leading community health clinics, all ethnic chambers of commerce, and top community-based economic development organizations – celebrate the historic billboard agreements approved last year by the Oakland City Council. We have fought for this opportunity against the billboard monopoly, against Clear Channel, for five years. The agreements approved by Council set the bar for community benefits – nearly $70 Million over their lifetime, more than 23 times the total paid by all previous Clear Channel relocation agreements in Oakland combined.

Published

2 weeks ago

July 13, 2024

Oakland Post

The Oakland Billboard Economic Development Coalition.

Grand Jury Report Incorrect – Council & Community Benefit

Unfortunately, a recent flawed Grand Jury report got it wrong, so we feel compelled to correct the record:

Regarding the claim that the decision was made hastily, the report itself belies that claim. The process was five years in the making, with two and a half years from the first City Council hearing to the final vote. Along the way, as the report describes, there were multiple Planning Commission hearings, public stakeholder outreach meetings, a Council Committee meeting, and then a vote by the full Council. Not only was this not hasty, it had far more scrutiny than any of the previous relocation agreements approved by the City with Clear Channel, all of which provide 1/23 of the benefits of the Becker/OFI agreements approved by the Council.
More importantly, the agreements will actually bring millions to the City and community, nearly $70M to be exact, 23 times the previous Clear Channel relocation agreements combined. They certainly will not cost the city money, especially since nothing would have been on the table at all if our Coalition had not been fighting for it. Right before the decisive City Council Committee hearing, in the final weeks before the full Council vote, there was a hastily submitted last-minute “proposal” by Clear Channel that was debunked as based on non-legal and non-economically viable sites, and relying entirely on the endorsement of a consultant that boasts Clear Channel as their biggest client and whose decisions map to Clear Channel’s monopolistic interests all over the country. Some City staff believed these unrealistic numbers based on false premises, and, since they only interviewed City staff, the Grand Jury report reiterated this misinformation, but it was just part of Clear Channel’s tried and true monopolistic practices of seeking to derail agreements that actually set the new standard for billboard community benefits. Furthermore, our proposals are not mutually exclusive – if Clear Channel’s proposal was real, why had they not brought it forward previously? Why have they not brought it forward since? Because it was not a real proposal – it was nothing but smoke and mirrors, as the Clear Channel’s former Vice President stated publicly at Council.

Speaking on behalf of the community health clinics that are the primary beneficiaries of the billboard funding, La Clinica de la Raza CEO Jane Garcia, states: “In this case, the City Council did the right thing – listening to the community that fought for five years to create this opportunity that is offering the City and community more than twenty times what previous billboard relocation agreements have offered.”

Oakland Billboard Economic Development Coalition

Native American Health Center	La Clínica de la Raza	West Oakland Health Center
Asian Health Services	Oakland LGBTQ Center	Roots Community Health Center
The Unity Council	Black Cultural Zone	Visit Oakland
Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce	Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce	Oakland Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce
Oakland Latino Chamber of Commerce	Building Trades of Alameda County	(partial list)

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Activism

Grocery Inflation Causes Food Banks to be the Default for Families in Oakland

Steve Morris, Director of Natural Resources and Environment at GAO, explained that while the pandemic certainly had an effect on food increases, there is not one single factor for a rise in food prices. He said events like the Ukraine-Russian war, the avian influenza epidemic that raised the price of eggs, and climate change are also key factors.

Published

2 weeks ago

July 12, 2024

Oakland Post

Photo: iStock image.

By Magaly Muñoz

During the past three years, the US has seen the largest increase in food prices since the 1980s. In response to this crisis, community food banks have emerged to provide much-needed assistance to families in need.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that national food prices have increased 11% from 2021 to 2022, when the average yearly increase was previously 2%. The San Francisco Bay Area saw a 12% increase from 2021 to 2022.

While still maintaining that elevated prices will persist for the foreseeable future, Morris anticipates a decrease of 8% in food price increases.

He also stated that while the average person may spend 10% of their income on groceries, a low-income family may spend 30%, making the inflation in food prices that much harsher.

“Higher food prices can put people in a position where they have to make some tough choices between ‘can they go to the grocery store and buy food’ or ‘do they have to spend it on other necessities like home or health care or other things,’” Morris said.

Michael Altfest is the Director of Community Engagement and Marketing for Alameda County (AC) Food Bank, the primary food distributor in the county with over 400 community partners that receive frequent donations.

Altfest shared that from 2019 to 2023, the number of pounds of food distributed to their community partners has doubled. In 2019, the food bank distributed 32.5 million pounds of food, while in 2021 during the height of the pandemic, they distributed 58.1 million pounds. This year they are on pace to distribute almost 60 million pounds of food.

“If we’re on pace this year to provide more than we did in the pandemic, I think that says a lot about what the state of hunger is right now,” Altfest said.

During the height of the pandemic, state and federal government relief programs helped families offset significant expenses like groceries. These programs included the child tax credit increase that put anywhere from $2,000 up to $3,600 back into qualifying families pockets when filing their yearly taxes.

Another program that directly targeted food insecurity, was the increase in funds for SNAP or CalFresh. These government programs provide food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people to help them maintain adequate nutrition and health. But earlier this spring, funding was cut from the state program CalFresh and families saw at least a $95 decrease in their assistance.

“Every single person talks about the cost of living in Alameda County, every single person. The cost of rent, the cost of food, those are things that come up every single time without fail,” Altfest shared.

One of AC Food Bank’s community partners is Homies Empowerment, a non-profit in Oakland that was established as a means to support youth and the community through a positive lens.

Selena Duarte, the FREEdom Store Coordinator, said the organization’s initiative to help families with food provision began in May of 2020 when their original store was filled only with books and students told them that while it was nice to have things to read, “they can’t eat books,” showing the team at Homies Empowerment that there were bigger needs in the community that they had to address.

Since then, the organization has expanded its services. They now provide groceries every Tuesday, have established the FREEdom Farm where they grow produce that gets distributed in their make-shift store, offer hot breakfast to 40 students and their families five days a week, and much more.

Duarte said that they serve almost 400 families a week and they are continuing to expand their food services due to the increasing number of people coming to them seeking help to reduce their spending on groceries. She recognized that although people say that the “pandemic is over”, she knows that the stress that families are experiencing is still very real.

“The next phase is really becoming a sustainable community food hub, where literally we can grow, share, cook, and store our food here in the community and for the community,” Duarte said.

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Bay Area

PG&E Increases Rates While Bay Area Households Are Struggling to Stay Afloat

Prior to the pandemic, less than 2% of callers were asking for utility assistance, but in the last year that percentage has grown to 8.2%, according to Eden I&R data. Oakland made up 40% of the calls to 211, with Black and Latino individuals and single parents making up the majority of the callers. Female callers made up over double that of male callers and most ranged from 25 to 64 years old.

Published

2 weeks ago

July 12, 2024

Oakland Post

PG&E is increasing utility rates for Californians causing the cost of living to rise as millions of residents struggle to pay their bills. Photo: iStock image.

By Magaly Muñoz

The cost of living is growing as millions of California customers will soon start to see the effects of PG&E raising their rates after a case ruling that will hike up monthly utility bills and ultimately raise the cost of living for struggling residents.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) agreed in November to a request by the electric company for $13.5 billion for wildfire system enhancement and undergrounding, vegetation management, and capacity upgrades.

Starting Jan. 1, residents will see a nearly $33 increase in their upcoming electric and natural gas bill.

Mark Toney, Executive Director of The Utility Reform Network (TURN), an advocacy group, said that low-income families would be most affected by the change.

“I like to say we want the most green for the least green, and the cost of ‘greening the grid’ should not be cutting off low-income families of color from the grid because the monthly bills are too doggone high,” Toney said.

Toney said he was worried that if the cost of utilities continues to increase, some families would be unable to make their payments and would therefore, lose power.

If families choose cost-saving alternatives like using candles, the potential for a fire rises if families with small children accidentally knock something over and don’t put it out in time. People also rely on medical devices for health-related reasons to be hooked up for long periods of time, which could contribute to high costs in electricity bills.

Some Bay Area residents are already struggling to pay their utility bills.

Longtime Oakland resident, Rev. Dr. Barbara Jim-George has found herself using odd, potentially dangerous, alternatives to using her central heat, such as leaving open a hot oven to warm her living room because her apartment is “like a walk-in freezer.”

The CDC has warned against using this method to heat up your home as it can disperse dangerous pollutants and gasses, like carbon monoxide, and worsen already existing lung diseases.

“I can leave something sitting out on my table at night and it’s just fine as it would be in the refrigerator,” Jim-George said.

She had retired from her job in 2014 and was living on a tight budget for a few years until she found herself back at work in 2018 because her social security checks weren’t enough to pay bills.

As the cold and rainy weeks persist, the reverend anticipates a higher utility bill in the mail soon.

Jim-George shared that she had a cousin who lost their home in the Camp Fire of 2018, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history, and blamed PG&E for not learning from these tragedies to do what was best for customers.

“They [PG&E] should have buried lines long ago because we’re eating the cost for [their mistakes]. I think it’s negligent on their side to not have had the foresight to understand the issues beforehand,” Jim-George said.

While the reverend is one of many who will have to resort to budgets and taking on second jobs in order to keep up with high housing bills, organizations across the area have seen a large intake of housing and emergency needs for decades, increasing with the effects of the pandemic in the last four years.

The need for utility assistance has grown exponentially, with four times the amount of calls coming in about families who have been without energy or are months behind in bills and are at risk of losing power in their homes.

“Housing [and related needs] remains our top concern for callers calling 211,” Allison DeJung said.

DeJung is the Executive Director of Eden I&R, which operates the calls and messages from 211 Bay Area- a multilingual 24/7 information hotline that connects callers with resources in Alameda County.

She said that in the last fiscal year, her team received over 69,000 calls and they made about 113,000 referrals to programs and organizations in the county for issues related to housing, utilities, food assistance and more.

DeJung said most callers looking for help paying their utility services were connected to Spectrum Community Services.

Spectrum is a nonprofit organization that has financially assisted low-income families and individuals through utility, water, and food aid since 1971.

Last year they received nearly 10,000 applications for their Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps households pay overdue energy bills. The organization was only able to help 5,000 of those applicants.

Black households, similar to data from Eden I&R, were the majority of applicants for utility assistance at Spectrum, along with the majority of assistance coming from Oakland residents.

Lara Calvert, Executive Director of Spectrum Community Services, said the lack of funding is the primary reason they have to turn away applicants.

Assistance can be granted once every 12 months, with a cap of $3000 in overdue bills. Calvert said the large cap is what also contributes to helping less people every year because if multiple people apply for large quantities of assistance, funding runs out quicker.

Spectrum prioritizes households that have people who are over 60, anybody who’s disabled in the home, people who have children five years or younger, as well as people with a higher overall energy burden for their home.

A high energy burden is when a family’s energy or utility bills take up the majority of a household’s monthly income, making it difficult to maintain a sustainable quality of life.

Calvert shared that although the beginning of the pandemic brought more attention to the organization, 2023 was the largest year for residents asking for assistance from the program and it doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down soon.

“We are anticipating continuing to have a large number of people seeking assistance this year that will far outstrip our amount of money that we have to give out,” Calvert said.