Nov. 1 marks Latina Equal Pay Day—the extra 10 months and one day Latinx women had to work into 2018 to earn as much money as white men made in 2017 alone.
On average, Latinas are paid 53 cents for every dollar that white, non-Hispanic men make, according to the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. That 53-cent number shows no improvement from last year, and is in fact worse than other estimates that placed last year’s wage gap at 54 cents to the dollar.
The Latina wage gap is the worst of the wage gaps for women. When averaged all together, women make 80 cents on the dollar, with Equal Pay Day for that discrepancy marked on April 10 this year.
Black Women’s Equal Pay day was in August, at 63 cents on white men’s dollar. Native American women make 57 cents on the dollar, with an equal pay date in late September.
White women make 79 cents on the dollar, just under the 80-cent measure of Equal Pay Day, and Asian women earn 87 cents.
Latina Equal Pay Day arrives near the close of the calendar year, an indicator of how bad that wage gap is. The reasons behind the gulf are varied, from the lack of Latinas in top-paying roles to the overrepresentation of Latinas in low-paying jobs like childcare and hospitality.
Addressing those challenges and closing the gap will require work year-round—not just on Equal Pay Day, says Jimena Almendares, vice president of global expansion for Intuit and president of the company’s Latinx network.
“It just takes focus, not just one day, but throughout the year,” she says.
It’s a sentiment actress and activist Eva Longoria echoed last year in her op-ed for Coins2Day.
“I come from a long, proud line of smart, hard-working Mexican-American women, and this injustice strikes deep. So I ask myself: How can we start to address the widespread and enduring gender wage gap problem?” She wrote. “The first step is a cultural shift in which we acknowledge our unconscious biases and, as a society, believe women when they say the wage gap isn’t a matter of personal choice (e.g. Taking time to raise children, not asking for a promotion), but rather a symptom of systemic gender discrimination.”
