UK wage gap hits women of color the hardest
The Fawcett Society, a UK-based organization fighting against the wage gap, has named tomorrow Women's No Pay Day, "because the pay gap is the equivalent of men being paid all year and women working for free from October 30th."
In addition to the gender pay gap, women of color in the UK are disproportionately affected:
Katherine Rake, Director of the Fawcett Society, said: “Every year women are being ripped off by the pay gap and at the current painfully slow rate of progress the pay gap will not be closed in our lifetimes]. It’s worrying that all women face these gaps , [but] that some groups of ethnic minority women face even bigger gaps is outrageous."
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Working free from Oct 30th until when? January 31st?
I find the wording to be confusing. Or is it just too early for me?
It's a clever idea, although I do agree with secondhandsally. The wording is a little vague.
However, comparing this thought process to something weird and almost abstract like 17%? It's a lot more effective to put this in term of working days versus percentages on the dollar.
...until the end of the year.
We would get paid again on the 1st not the 31st of January
Haha, yes I meant until Jan 1st not Jan 31st. Whoops.
This is a little confusing. Yes, if you use white men as the reference point for comparison, the earnings gap for non-white women is larger than it is for white women. Because non-white people make less, on average, than white people, and non-white women take a double hit. BUT, at least in the U.S., if you look at gender gaps in earnings within racial/ethnic groups, the gap between white men and women is much bigger, in both absolute and % terms, than the gap between black or Hispanic men and women. The reasons for this, unfortunately, have more to do with bad news for black/Hispanic men than good news for black/Hispanic women.
Fawcett is a great organisation that i'm proud to be a member of - but i think they got the wording a little wrong here. It's the equivalent of women being paid until October the 31st, while men get paid for a full year. The theory is that women may as well be working for free from now until the end of the year.
Funnily enough just before the Fawcett AGM where I learned a little more about this, I found out that equivalent men in my organisation are paid quite a bit more than me. My goodness it makes me angry. So I got a new job, with a massive pay rise. Huzzah! I wish I could have changed more within the organisation before I left, but supporting societies like Fawcett makes me feel a little better.
I believe it's based on the concept of the tax freedom day - the day when (if we paid all our taxes at the beginning of the year) we stop working for the government, and start working for ourselves. This is the day when women stop earning at the same rate as men, and start working for free.
Sadly, in the UK this provokes a lot of "women choose to earn less than men" commentary from ignorant people. e.g.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&forumID=3755&edition=1&ttl=20071030210344&#paginator
I believe it's based on the concept of the tax freedom day - the day when (if we paid all our taxes at the beginning of the year) we stop working for the government, and start working for ourselves. This is the day when women stop earning at the same rate as men, and start working for free.
Sadly, in the UK this provokes a lot of "women choose to earn less than men" commentary from ignorant people. e.g.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&forumID=3755&edition=1&ttl=20071030210344&#paginator