Black Women’s Equal Pay Day is August 13. But it is NOT a day to celebrate. It is the day in 2020 when the average black woman, working full time since January of 2019, finally catches up to the amount of money that the average white man, working full time, makes in one year.

That’s right! She has to work 20 months to make as much as a white man makes in 12 months. And the difference keeps piling up: it takes her 40 months to his 24 months of work for the same amount of money; 60 months for his 36 months of work. That’s systemic racism and sexism as it plays out in our society. No wonder 22.4 percent of black women have family incomes below the federal poverty line.

So what can we do about it? One big thing would be to recognize the skills required to be a caregiver, and pay those folks according to their real value to our society.

Why start with caregiving? Because for centuries women and slaves were just expected to take care of babies, children, the sick, and the elderly with no compensation at all. And now that caregiving has moved into the marketplace our society still is not in the habit of valuing those skills. In the long run we need to reevaluate jobs and their compensation on a gender and racially neutral scale.

Barb Thomas, August 10, 2020