August 28 is Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Women’s Equal Pay Day, which seeks to bring awareness to the average wages of the NHPI community.
Full-time working NHPI women make 66 cents for every dollar made by full-time working White men, according to a Facebook post by Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF).
The gap grows when including those who work part-time and seasonally, with NHPI women on the whole making 60 cents to their white male counterparts, according to the National Organization of Women (NOW).
“The wage gap we experience as Pasifika women and workers is a single strand in a larger net of economic injustices that limit our ability to care for ourselves, families, and communities,” Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC) Executive Director Estella Owoimaha-Church said to NOW. “Ensnared in such a wide net of structural inequities, the conversation begins with equal pay but does not end here.”
Frequently categorized alongside Asian Americans under the AANHPI label, the NHPI Women’s Equal Pay Day’s purpose is to encourage research around the NHPI community’s labor conditions and access to resources. The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) said in a press release that the holiday highlights the need for disaggregated data around the community.
To commemorate it, NAPAWF published data that broke down wages according to AANHPI women’s ethnic groups. The NHPI data was based on Fijian, Chamorro, Samoan, Hawaiian, and Tongan American women. Fijian Americans made the most on average at 73 cents to one dollar made by a White American man, while Tongan Americans made the least at 59 cents on the same metric.
Between Asian Americans, the gap was wider, with Taiwanese Americans averaging the highest at $1.18 and Bangladeshi Americans earning the least at 49 cents.
On the federal scale, APIAHF further advocated for the Paycheck Fairness Act, an act introduced in Congress last year that mandates additional funding and research about women’s incomes and careers. APIAHF and NAPAWF both referenced a 2022 directive in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget that requires federal agencies to research and explicitly mention NHPIs in federal data — changes will be going into effect in 2024, NAPAWF reported.
NAPAWF Executive Director Sung Yeon Choimorrow said breaking down data serves the practical purpose of explaining economic mobility differences between groups.
“Each community has their own specific needs, cultural expectations, and financial obligations, and we want NHPI women to access the tools that lead to greater financial freedom,” Choimorrow said in the release. “And we can only achieve this by starting with research that acknowledges the resources required to help this community achieve economic justice.”
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