Black Women Cannot Afford to Wait 200 Years for Equal Pay

Newsweek

10-07-2025

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July 10 is Black Women's Equal Pay Day, marking how long a Black woman must work into 2025 to earn what a white man made in 2024.
That's 19 months of labor a Black woman will have to work for only 12 months of pay. Proving the adage that, as Black women, "We must work twice as hard to get half as far."
Black women working full-time, year-round make just 64 cents for every dollar a white man makes, and equally disappointing, the wage gap has only narrowed by 5 cents in the last two decades. At this rate, we won't reach pay equality until 2227—over 200 years from now.
For millions of Black women across the country, this staggering wage inequality is nothing new. We know all too well the unpaid labor, workplace discrimination, and lack of opportunity we face that's keeping us from being paid what we're owed.
Growing up, Representative Adams experienced that firsthand.
Representative Alma Adams (D-N.C.) speaks during a House Education and Labor Committee Markup on the H.R. 582 Raise The Wage Act, in the Rayburn House Office Building on March 6, 2019, in Washington, D.C.
Representative Alma Adams (D-N.C.) speaks during a House Education and Labor Committee Markup on the H.R. 582 Raise The Wage Act, in the Rayburn House Office Building on March 6, 2019, in Washington, D.C.Representative Adams was raised by her mother who was a domestic worker, working tirelessly every single day to provide for her family. She cleaned other people's homes so her children wouldn't have to—so they could focus on going to school and getting an education.
But day in and day out, no matter how hard she worked, she barely made enough for her family to get by. They struggled to put food on the table, to make rent, to pay the medical bills of Representative Adams' sister who suffered from sickle cell disease. Much like so many Black women in America, she was never paid what she was worth and was never given the opportunity to build a better life for herself.
Occupational segregation is a significant roadblock to equal pay for Black women. We are overrepresented in underpaid but essential jobs such as child care workers, domestic workers, nursing aides, and social workers. Our country cannot survive without these careers, but their pay has never reflected that.
But even when we enter higher-paying jobs we're underrepresented in, the wage gap persists, as Dr. Watson Ellerbe faced herself.
Dr. Watson Ellerbe's parents prioritized education and set a powerful example—her father was an insurance agency manager and accountant, and her mother was a nurse. With their support, she pursued the American Dream, believing that through hard work and determination, she had an equal shot at success.
But after earning three degrees and working her way up from an entry-level position to executive leadership, she discovered she was earning $30,000 less than her white male counterpart. When she raised the issue with leadership, nothing changed. Research confirms what her experience shows: Black women continue to face gender and racial discrimination at the bargaining table. This isn't about individual choices, it's a systemic issue.
Despite us coming from different backgrounds and upbringings, we have both earned doctorates, rose in our careers, and achieved impressive leadership roles. We have also experienced wage discrimination firsthand.
For Black women, there is no amount of time we can wait, no location we can reside, no amount of education we can achieve, nor a career ladder we can climb to achieve pay equity with white men.
And this doesn't just impact us. It impacts our families for generations to come. Over the course of a 40-year career, a Black woman who works full-time throughout the year stands to lose over $1 million in earnings.
That's $1 million less a Black woman must spend than a white man on child care, education, health care, food, housing, and building generational wealth for our children and grandchildren.
As we watch critical programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) face unprecedented cuts, efforts to dismantle the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau, and attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion—Black women face even further hurdles to make ends meet and overcome workplace barriers.
It has been 62 years since the Equal Pay Act was signed into law but for Black women, pay equity is still centuries away for us—unless we act.
We need to advance robust policies on the local, state, and federal levels that truly combat wage discrimination and ensure we can achieve what we've always been fighting for: equal pay for equal work.
That can only happen if everyone gets involved. We need you to raise awareness—tell your colleagues, tell your community, tell your elected officials, and demand equal pay and better workplace policies. Learn more about solutions to this injustice and join us in the fight for true equality because we cannot afford to wait.
Together, let's make Black Women's Equal Pay Day something to celebrate.
Congresswoman Alma S. Adams, Ph.D., represents North Carolina's 12th Congressional District in Congress. A proud HBCU graduate and former educator of 40 years, Rep. Adams is co-chair of both the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Caucus and the Black Maternal Health Caucus, as well as a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee and House Education & Workforce Committee.
Dr. Robyn Watson Ellerbe is a distinguished senior fellow at The Institute for Women's Policy Research where she leads Advancing Black Women in Leadership, an initiative addressing the systemic barriers Black women face in their leadership journey. Her work has also focused on addressing health disparities that disproportionately impact minority populations and advancing minority participation in the public health and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.