Black Women’s Equal Pay Day 2024
July 9, 2024
This year Black Women’s Equal Pay Day is July 9, 2024. Please join advocates, lawmakers, and community members from across the country on July 9 for a National Social Media Storm at 11am PT/2pm ET to raise awareness about the wage gap that impacts Black women and their families.
On this day, we will highlight the fact that the wage gap for Black women compared to non-Hispanic white men is 69 cents for full time, year-round workers. The wage gap widens to 66 cents when looking at all Black women earners (including full-time, part-time and part-year workers), as compared to all working non-Hispanic white men. These wage gaps are unacceptable. Black women continue to be underpaid, undervalued, and overrepresented in jobs that lack important workplace protections.
As we continue to fight for equal pay for equal work, we know that there are many factors and forms of discrimination in employment that impact Black women’s pay throughout their careers reducing their economic security and stability, including the lack of equal pay for the same or similar work, reliance on salary history, and the failure to provide updated, robust protections against workplace harassment. On this day, we are going to be organizing around tools to help close the wage gap through equal pay and better workplace harassment protections!
For this year’s Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, our shared calls to action will center around urging:
Members of Congress to swiftly pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would modernize and strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to better combat pay discrimination and close the wage gap, by protecting workers from retaliation for discussing pay, banning the use of prior salary history, providing stronger remedies, and codifying pay data collection, among other updates.
Members of Congress to be a co-sponsor of The Bringing an End to Harassment by Enhancing Accountability and Rejecting Discrimination (BE HEARD) in the Workplace Act, which is comprehensive legislation to address workplace harassment, including by extending federal protections against harassment and other forms of discrimination to all working people, promoting transparency and accountability in the workplace, clarifying that sex discrimination at work includes harassment and other forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and eliminating forced arbitration and the subminimum wage for tipped employees. This bill is expected to be reintroduced in late July by Senator Murray and Rep. Pressley.
Thank you for joining us this year in marking this important day.
On behalf of the Black Women’s Equal Pay Day Co-Leads,
Equal Pay Today and Equal Rights Advocates | National Council of Negro Women | Black Women’s Roundtable | Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable | National Partnership for Women and Families | National Women’s Law Center | American Association of University Women | Institute for Women’s Policy Research | National Organization for Women
On July 26, 2023 Equal Pay Today held a virtual conversation with EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows and the incredible leaders of the BWEPD organizational hosts to discuss the pay gaps for Black women, the contributors to this ongoing problem, the devastating impact on Black women and families, and the solutions for closing the pay gaps once and for all. Watch the video below!
A new study from Equal Rights Advocates shows over 50% of Black and Latinx struggled to make ends meet during the reign of the pandemic.
