The Wage Gap

While discussing the newest Avengers movie, one of the actors came up, and a few of my friends laughed a little at Benedict Cumberbatch's statement of how he refuses to take a role if his female costars aren't paid the same. I was surprised to find out that one of my friends believed the wage gap to be a myth created by feminazis as propaganda.

Well.

It isn't.

For an asian woman, her salary will be a little less than a man's. To every one dollar he earns, she will earn 80 percent of that, which doesn't seem like much until you add it up. If they work for five days in a week for eight hours, then she earns about five dollars less than him and in an entire year, that adds up to over two hundred dollars less. Maybe she only works for fifty years, then she has lost over a hundred thousand dollars. This gap is even worse for women who are hispanic or black. For me, as a latina woman (even if I don't look it), I will earn a little more than half of what a white man does.

The women who don't believe the wage gap is a thing (I'm afraid to say) are often referred to as white feminists. They are the ones who are privileged so much that they often don't recognize the inequalities that other women feel. They are called white feminists because, in the 1960s, many of the white women were all marching in the name of second wave feminism but what they didn't seem to recognize was that women of color faced even more prejudice than they did.

That is when Mexican-American women began the Chicana feminist movement. They needed to be able to recognize the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections that all resulted in them. The Chicano movement was already underway with hispanic men rallying for equality and the white feminists were fighting for women's equality, but the Chicanas had nothing. The white feminists didn't consider that racism could also contribute to inequality that others felt because they only ever understood privilege.

It is the same thing with the wage gap. Those who don't believe in the wage gap are either men who don't have to deal with it, or they are women who earn more and do not think it is that big of a deal.

The wage gap doesn't always apply to women either. Men of color also face discrimination in their salary, as well. They also earn less than a white man, but they do often earn more than a woman. Just because they earn more than a woman does not mean that it doesn't matter. In order to reduce the wage gap, we need to reduce it for all. Getting closer to equality for women is not feminism. In order to achieve feminism, we would need to reduce the wage gap for everyone—both men and women.

You're probably wondering why I still haven't told you the solution to the wage gap yet. I don't really have one. Yes we do need more people like Benedict Cumberbatch who can force employers in Hollywood to give equal wages, but a lot of men won't think of that or care. Yes we need laws put in action to force employers and companies to give wages equal to the job that is done, but I think more of the problem is that people don't realize it is a problem. We need more people, both men and women, to stand up and say that it's wrong and it does exist no matter what others may say. Until we have people rallying for legislation to prevent this, until we have people demanding equal wages, until we have people standing up for the oppressed, we will not get anywhere.

For Every Dollar