Fortune: Why Black women’s wage gap is a problem for everyone

August 3. 2021

ERA’s Shannon Williams, Director of the Equal Pay Today campaign, was featured in a Fortune article about Black Women’s Equal Pay Day:

For Black women, of whom many are the primary breadwinners of their households, the pay gap of 63 cents on the dollar represents more than just a loss of money, said Shannon Williams, the director of Equal Pay Today, a project of Equal Rights Advocates…

To begin to rectify the wage gap between Black women and white men, companies need to make changes to their hiring and promotion practices, said Williams. Policies such as asking people to report their previous wages or discouraging workers from sharing how much they are being paid with colleagues can keep in place lower pay for Black women…

Until substantial change is made, advocates such as Williams will continue to bring attention to the wage gap, she said. “When you can actually see it and you can put a number to it with the 63 cents, and you can put a date on it and people can see where it actually falls, then it becomes a tangible issue,” Williams told Fortune. “Once it becomes a tangible issue, then it becomes something that can be fixed.”

Read the article.