Group calls for attention to wage gap between black women, white men.
An Atlanta group is leading a national coalition of progressive organizations in urging employees to symbolically clock out of work at 2:07 p.m. on Tuesday, July 28th in order to help bring attention to the wage gap faced by black women in the workplace.
Both the time and the date of the clock out are significant, according to Atlanta Women for Equality (AWE) Executive Director Lisa Anderson. Black women only make $0.64 for every dollar earned by white men, and 2:07 p.m. is approximately 64 percent of an average workday — which is when a black woman could leave work if she were paid the same as her white peers. For a black woman to earn the same income as her white male counterparts in 2014, she would need to work an extra 208 into 2015 — or July 28, 2015, which just happens to be tomorrow.
The wage gap between black women and white men demonstrates why both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have sought to link the issues of racial injustice and economic inequity in the past week — both have a significant impact on black lives, which shouldn’t only matter after they’ve been taken. As Clinton said, “Black Lives Matter” shouldn’t be “just a slogan, it should be a guiding principle.”
AWE hopes to further that principle by asking participants to download a printable time card and post a picture of themselves holding it on social media. The idea is generate conversations about the wage gap both on AWE’s Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram accounts and social media at large using the hashtags #BlackWomenEqualPay and #ClockOut4EqualPay.
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/27/group_calls_for_black_womens_equal_pay_day_to_call_attention_to_wage_gap_between_between_black_women_white_men/
