Excerpt: Glamour
by Abby Haglage
If you thought the gender pay gap statistics couldn’t get worse, think again. A new report Monday estimates that it will take 232 years to eliminate the gender pay gap for Hispanic women, compared to 108 years for black women and 40 years for white women.
The report, released by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, comes on the heels of another from the World Economic Forum which predicted it would take 170 years to even things out between women and men. Hispanic women in the U.S. will have to wait another six decades—until 2248.
“These projections show just how slow the rate of progress has been in closing the wage gap,” Ariane Hegewisch, program director on Employment and Earnings for IWPR told Glamour. “And for Black and Hispanic women, it’s glacially slow.”
Some of the disparity is fueled by the fact that salaries for Hispanic women are falling faster than other women’s. Between 2004 and 2014, the median income for this group dropped 4.5 percent, three times the rate at which women’s salaries declined overall. Education also contributes to the massive gap. Hispanic women (along with Native American women) are the least likely group to hold a bachelor’s degree, according to the IWPR’s Status of Women report, released in February. An estimated one in three has less than a high school diploma.
While conversations about the gender inequality in pay have been happening for decades, this report is the first to expose the stark projections on equal pay for Hispanic women. The findings show not only a disturbing lack of progress but, in some places, an issue that is actively getting worse.