If you are Latina in United States, you only earn 57 cents on the dollar. To put that into context, just to keep pace, these women work almost twice as hard as a baseline – just to keep up.
As we look at racial disparities in this country, the idea that Latina women work longer hours for lower pay is unacceptable. We caught up with Laura Espriu, who has more than 10 years of experience in HR and DEI, to better understand what is happening to create this disparity.
Q: Can you describe the equity pay gap for women and girls in the state of Washington?
A: “We always talk about the pay gap; we don’t always talk about the differences depending what type of woman you are. Right? So, in general, in the United States, we hear that, for every dollar that a white man errands, white women, basically earn 82 cents of that dollar, which is bad, right? However, if you break that down, depending on what type of woman you are in this case, for example, if you’re a Black woman, you only earn 63 cents of that dollar. If you’re Latina, you only earn 57 cents of that dollar, which leave us, as a Latina myself, at the bottom.”
Q: Why is this happening?
A: “They don’t have those that intersectional lens, meaning they don’t look at the rates of how many women of color do we have in leadership positions? Right. They only look at how many Latinx, how many Black people and how many women. Right. When you look into, OK, how many Black women, it’s totally a different story. It’s the same here. We’re talking about the pay gap for different states, and we’re talking about the pay gap for depending what type of women you are.”
Q: Is there progress?
A: “I can definitely tell you there has been progress. We know that today, at least in 2021. The diversity and inclusion agenda has been top of mind for so many companies.”
