Today is Equal Pay Day, a date that symbolizes how far into 2020 women would have to work to earn as much as their male counterparts in 2019. Women still earn 81.6 cents for every dollar that men make, according to the National Committee on Pay Equity, and when broken into specific ethnicities, AAPI women fare far worse than the model minority stereotype would suggest.
Before the coronavirus hit in February, the pay gap was shrinking.
“On Equal Pay Day 2020, we face yet another threat to economic justice—this time in the form of a pandemic, said Ms. Foundation for Women President and CEO Teresa C. Younger in a statement.
“There is a certain irony in celebrating Equal Pay Day during this historic time in the United States,” said Younger. “Today, as women around the country are suffering from lost wages, cut hours, and facing extreme economic hardships due to the spread of COVID-19, the pre-existing gaps in pay inequality are even more reprehensible.”
Compared to other women of color, AAPI women are on the higher end of the wage gap earning on average 92 cents for every dollar earned by men. The Equal Pay Day for AAPI women was observed Feb. 11.
However, the model minority myth fails to acknowledge the many AAPI subgroups that face financial discrimination and hardships.
“Race and ethnicity, age, whether you’re a mother — all these things affect how a woman experiences the wage gap. Because Asian American and Pacific Islander people are often lumped together and considered a monolith that is the ‘model minority,’ the reality of our struggles is made intentionally invisible,” said National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum Executive Director Sung Yeon Choimorrow.
If you break it down into specific Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, the wage gap grows.
For certain communities, the wage gap is far greater. Vietnamese women earn $0.67, Hmong women earn $0.61, and Nepalese women earn only $0.50, making them some of the lowest paid people in the nation. Even within high earning fields, Asian women are paid less than their male counterparts.
Women belonging to other racial groups make significantly less money as a whole.
- Asian American and Pacific Islander women: $0.92
- Black women: August 13, $0.62
- Native American women: October 1, $0.57
- Latina women: November 2, $0.54
Those professions heavily populated by women are suffering under the policies in place to combat the coronavirus. Today, Macy’s announced it will begin furloughing most of its 130,000 employees across the nation. Most of those will be women.
Thousands of restaurants employing waitresses have been forced to shut down, day care providers have been laid off as the children have stopped coming because their mothers are at working at home or have lost their jobs, the hotel industry is laying off workers.
Amid the pandemic, “Many hourly wage, gig and contract workers lack paid sick leave, family leave, and medical leave at a time when our national health and economy are under threat,” said Younger. “Women comprise two-thirds of this workforce, and a disproportionate amount of these women are women of color, who now may face reduced hours, alongside the challenges of homeschooling children and tending to family members across generations.”
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