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“Today, more than nine months into the year, Native American women finally get to do the do the same.
Per the AAUW (American Association of University Women), “American Indian and Alaska Native women are paid just 57 cents for every dollar white men are paid. For Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander women, that number is 59 cents.”
The significant lack of data on the jobs and earnings of Native women makes it difficult to paint a comprehensive portrait of the challenges they are facing. Part of that lack is due to the group’s small numbers (American Indians and Alaska Natives make up just 2% of the U.S. population); and part is due to the long history of racism and exclusion of Native Americans by the U.S. government. AAUW adds that marginalization, disproportionately high rates of unemployment, and violence against Native women contribute to their bleak financial picture.
According to the National Institute of Justice, more than 83% of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetimes, including sexual assault, intimate partner violence, stalking, and psychological aggression. (The percentage of American Indian and Alaska Native men who have experienced violence is not far behind.)”
– Refinery29, What Equal Pay Day Looks Like For Native American Women.
“Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: There’s a pay gap between women and men, and that gap is widest on average for Latinas, black women, and Native women. In fact, American Indian and Alaska Native women are paid just 57 cents for every dollar white men are paid. For Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander women, that number is 59 cents.
September 25, 2017, marks Native women’s Equal Pay Day, the day that the wages of American Indian and Alaska Native women catch up to the money white men were paid in 2016. (It took about 21 months to white men’s 12, if you’re counting.) We also use this occasion to recognize the pay gap that Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander women face.
Here’s why you might not already know about this particular pay gap: Native women are a notoriously understudied group. According to AAUW’s researchers, the relatively small size of the population of Native women is at least partially responsible for the lack of information. American Indians and Alaska Natives make up just 2 percent of the U.S. population, about 5.3 million men and women. There are just 1.3 million Native people of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands. In contrast, there are 241 million people in the white population and 44 million in the black population. Government survey data contain less information about smaller groups.”
– AAUW.org, Native Women Have to Work 9 Extra Months to Make the Same Salary as White Men Made Last Year.
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 #39 – Unequal Pay.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
