By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 10 years ago

Chart of the Day: The pay gap for women of color

Earlier this week we got the terribly exciting news that, according to the latest Census numbers, the average American woman now makes 78 cents, instead of 77 cents, to the average dude’s dollar. But, as we know, the gap–which hasn’t improved in a decade–varies a lot by race.

Here’s a chart from ThinkProgress showing how the wages of women of different races compare to those of white men:

wagegapbrokenupbyrace-011

The analysis by AAUW shows that while the gap narrowed overall last year–by that statistically insignificant percentage point–it widened slightly for American Indian and Native Alaskan women and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women. Meanwhile, African-American women’s gap has worsened from 69 percent of white men’s earnings in 2011 to 64 percent today.

Maya DusenberyMaya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

Read more about Maya

Join the Conversation