Yesterday kicked off the Equal Pay Day season, the extra days of the year that certain subsets of women have to work to make the same amount of money as non-Hispanic white men. It’s a terrific way to make a point about the persistent gender pay gap in the U.S. This year, the day for all women falls on April 2.
But that number doesn’t tell the full story.
In 2019, AAPI women (Asian American and Pacific Islander) would have had to work two extra months to reach parity with white men. But because the date is typically the earliest individual Equal Pay Day – Latina Equal Pay Day falls on November 20, this year – in a way, it feels like progress.
In fact, it’s misleading.
The population of AAPI workers is highly diverse in terms of, well, everything – ethnicity, immigration experience, language, education, and the barriers they face at work.
According to the Center for Economic Policy and Research, some Asian women – Indian, Taiwanese, Sri Lankan, and Chinese – actually out-earn their white male peers. But the vast majority do not. Lowest on the list you’ll find Thai, Cambodian, Nepalese, Laotian, Hmong, and Burmese-American women, who all hover at or below 60 cents for every white, male dollar.
In no instances do any of these women earn as much as their male AAPI peers.
One thing that would immediately help would be to count AAPI workers correctly in government, workplace, and other research-driven surveys. Most surveys include the AAPI workforce as one aggregated “Asian” lump.
“The ‘model minority’ myth, which views AAPIs as a monolith and assumes that all AAPIs have socioeconomic stability, makes it harder for us to fight the wage gap for the AAPI women who need it the most,” said The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum in a statement. “The ‘model minority’ myth furthers the idea that these communities don’t need additional resources or support. Those in power, who buy into the myth, have responded by gutting, underfunding, or ignoring lifesaving programs that support us.”
And many corporate diversity reports don’t count them at all and simply fold them into the “white” number.
Last year, Buck Gee and Denise Peck, two former Silicon Valley executives, examined government-mandated workplace demographic records for the report, “The Illusion of Asian Success” published by Ascend, a non-profit leadership organization for Pan-Asian professionals.
Because AAPI workers aren’t always identified in corporate diversity reports, it conceals the barriers they’re facing at work.
Here’s the real deal: Across all sectors, Asian American professionals in the U.S. were more likely to be hired as individual contributors, but less likely to be promoted into management roles than any other race. “[C]ompanies have not done an adequate job of identifying and developing Asian American talent,” they say.
The reasons are complex. Because AAPIs are well represented in the workforce and outpace other demographics in terms of income and education, they’re not seen as an underrepresented group. And you can learn more about the ugly and persistent “model minority” myth here.
But it’s all a powerful reminder that you can’t manage – or advocate for – what you don’t measure, right?
We’ll be back on this topic on April 2. I hear we’ll be wearing red.
On Point
| Major brands struggle to accept President Trump’s occasional praise |
| Ordinarily a nod or brand shout-out from a seat of government is a good problem to have, but as the president becomes more embattled, his non-paid endorsements are increasingly being met with awkward silence from the companies he praises publicly. Consider the fast food array he offered the North Dakota State football team on Monday – including McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, and Wendy’s. No tweets, no thanks, no social love came in response. “It used to be that brands would love to get an endorsement from the president,” Tim Calkins, a marketing professor from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management tells The Washington Post.“Now, if anything, I think these companies probably squirm a bit.” |
| Washington Post |
| Big banks are leaving low income communities |
| According to a new report, big banks have closed 1,915 more branches in lower-income areas than they opened between 2014 and 2018, with J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America leading the pack. Experts worry that if the data is correct, it will make it harder for people in predominantly non-white and low-income neighborhoods to get access to affordable financial products, like mortgages. Click through for some proposed changes to the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA, which may make it easier for banks to comply with federal standards for reporting on how they serve low-income communities. |
| Fortune |
| Gayle King interviews R. Kelly and it all falls down |
| To say the singer “broke his silence” on his arrest and the many credible claims of sexual abuse leveled against him would be an insult to over-sharers everywhere. His behavior during this lengthy interview was alternatively bizarre and appalling, with a good measure of straight-to-the-camera menacing. It’s a must-watch even if you’ve made up your mind about Kelly. King was composed, confident and masterful in her questions. |
| CBS News |
On Background
| A TEDx event at a women’s prison breaks barriers and stereotypes |
| TEDxPerryvilleCorrectional was held last spring at the all- female Perryville prison complex in Goodyear, Arizona. It was designed as a challenge for the outside world: What do you see when you see a woman in an orange jumpsuit? Here is a short clip reel to get you started, it includes some important moments, along with remarks from speaker Jim Hooker, the founding CEO of the call center company Televerde. He employs many incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women, and encourages more employers to do the same. “We don't waste human potential, we don’t disposition based on a checked-box,” he says. The entire event seemed wonderful; there are more videos from the women here, and Hooker’s own story and call for other employers to do better is below. |
| TEDxPerryville Correctional |
| An ode to the only black kid in the class |
| This short video offers the best of two worlds. It starts as a poignant, animated poem written and narrated by poet and historian Clint Smith, created as part of TED-Ed’s There’s A Poem For Thatseries. “It seems you are the manifestation of several lifetimes of toil,” he begins. Then, Smith joins in a Skype call to talk about why he wrote it. In his interview, he says he felt moved to write the poem after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. But he cites the murder of Tamir Rice, as particularly heavy for him. “I was thinking a lot about the sort of conversations that parents have with their children about what it means to navigate a world that’s so often taught to fear them,” he says. “How does one maintain a sense of self? And a sense of belief in oneself?” |
| There's A Poem For That |
| The history of black women doctors in comic books |
| Darnel Degand has written an excellent essay exploring the long history of discrimination black women have experienced when they’ve pursued careers in medicine, and the media’s role in either perpetuating specific stereotypes or ignoring them entirely. Even W.E.B. Du Bois tackled the subject in a 1933 article, “Can a Colored Woman be a Physician?” (Yes, was his answer.) “The inability to see black women as doctors extends into the world of comic book superheroes,” he writes, with one notable exception: Dr. Cecilia Reyes, who appeared in Marvel’s X-Men in 1997. Degand is clearly a comic book fan and X-Men readers will geek out at his analysis of her plot line. Others will understand how much of an outlier she was. As her narrative grew, she became bolder, changed her bobbed hair to long locs, and was not there for any discrimination. “To the contrary, she was portrayed as a confident doctor who was in command of her operating room.” |
| AAIHS |
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