Native Women’s Equal Pay Day Statistics Reveal The Price Of Injustice
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In this op-ed, Diné/Ihanktonwan Dakota writer Jacqueline Keeler explains how the Native women’s equal pay day statistics reveal the injustice of the wage gap. Often, when white Americans meet a Native American, the first thing they ask about is the “free money” they believe all Natives get. But free money for Indigenous people in the United States is a myth. Being a Native woman in particular comes with a price — one we can calculate. Sept. 23 is Native Women’s Equal Pay Day for 2019. On the 266th day of the year, Native women finally bring home the equivalent pay to what a white man in a comparable position would’ve made in 2018 alone. On average, American women earned 82 cents to every dollar her white, non-Hispanic men counterpart made last year, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families. But for Native American women, specifically, that amount was just 58 cents. For Black women, it was approximately 62 cents, and for our Latinx sisters, it was around 54 cents, meaning they must wait until Nov. 20 to make as much as a white man made last year. The issue of equal pay impacts Native women and their […]
