The gender pay gap is the difference between what a man makes versus what a woman makes. Unfortunately, women of colour make even less than white women. For every dollar that a white male makes a white female makes 79 cents, a black women makes 64 cents, and a Hispanic women makes 57 cents.. Each year in August, Black Women’s Equal Pay Day arrives, marking the extra months that a black woman working full time year-round must work into the current year to have earned what her white male counterpart earned during the prior year. Black women will have to work well into the month of August to catch up to the wages earned by their white male counterparts. In concrete terms this means that black women experience a pay gap every day and unfortunately this gap adds up.
Women of colour must face both racism and sexism making it even harder for them to maintain a stable and welcoming work environment. Even high-status jobs can be an unfair environment for women of colour because they are very underrepresented. Companies have put measures into place that focus on achieving more diversity in the workplace, however, women of colour often lose out unless there is an explicit focus on race as well as gender. This is why I have proposed the actions plans and explains a bit about why I chose what I did. Research has shown that women of colour are far more ambitious and more likely to say what they want to advance in the corporate ladder, but they are less likely to find mentors to help them climb the corporate ladder. Inequality comes in many forms for women of colour.