Native Women’s Equal Pay Day in 2021 fell on Wednesday, September 8th. On this day, it takes an average full-time Indigenous woman, an additional 9 months to earn what the average white non-Hispanic man earns in just one year. That means on September 8th, Indigenous women now have made as much as a white non-Hispanic man earned by December 31st, 2020.
In a year where COVID-19 has put women at the forefront of a pandemic, three in ten Indigenous women were accounted for the front line workers (child care, grocery workers, healthcare, emergency services) who helped, and are still helping battle the pandemic. Despite their hard work year-round, essential worker or not, Indigenous women still earned 62 cents for every dollar earned by non-Hispanic white men. To make matters worse, Indigenous mothers earned 50 cents for every dollar that non-Hispanic white fathers are paid.
Despite the adversity that they face every year, these women still have to get up and show up for their families. Studies show that almost two-thirds of native American women provide at least 40 percent of their families’ income, and 21.4 percent are more likely to be in poverty by the time they reach. Currently, 1 in 3 Indigenous women lives in poverty with a median income of $23,000 a year. This is still true for Indigenous women living on tribal lands.
Knowing these facts is disheartening, and it’s all over $0.60. Along with the fact that Indigenous women are just a fraction of the population of women who are severely underpaid, this affects all women. If women across the United States received equal pay, it would reduce the pressure that mothers face when deciding what job to take, it would reduce poverty rates, and it would just flat out, be fair to women.
Additionally, let’s see the faces of Indigenous women in corporations at the forefront, in leadership roles. Beyond the wage gap, let’s close the racial gap that puts these women in the position to be making less, and into poverty conditions.
https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/news/2020/redbird-what-drives-native-american-poverty.html
https://leanin.org/equal-pay-data-about-the-gender-pay-gap
