The Gender Pay Gap Has Grown In New York, According To Study

Rosa DeLauro speaks at an event advocating the Paycheck Fairness Act. Rep DeLauro has introduced the bill every year since 1997.

Working women continue to earn less than their male counterparts in New York State, according to a new study released Monday by the nonprofit National Partnership for Women & Families. Released to coincide with Equal Pay Day (today, April 2nd), the study revealed how gender, race, and ethnicity continue to result in systemically lower pay for people who are not white men.

In New York State, women who work year-round and full-time, on average, make $6,735 less than their white male counterparts per year. That chalks up to 88 cents to the dollar, and is up from $5,766 in 2018, as amNewYork reports.

For many women of color, the statistics are even worse. The study shows that Latina and Black women are paid $30,023 and $24,370 less, respectively, than white, non-Hispanic men yearly. Asian women see $12,591 less annually. And the gap for white, non-Hispanic women is $13,147.

As if these numbers weren't harrowing enough, the study also broke down how the wage gap manifests by congressional district.

While it's undeniable that the gender pay gap exists, its reasons for persisting are far more gnarled, and factors such as discrimination, lack of flexible leave policies, harassment, and discrepancies in salary negotiation can all play a role. In recent years, researchers have increasingly examined how the wage gap widens exponentially when women are in their late 20s and early 30s, and potentially about to start families.

The pay gap in the United States has been closing over time, albeit slowly: The Institute for Women's Policy Research projects that pay equity could happen by 2059, given the slight increases in women's earnings relative to men's since 1960. But 40 years is a lifetime, and the money that someone loses during that time is critical. Consider how last year, City Comptroller Scott Stringer's office released research specifically examining the wage gap among Latina and Black women within New York City. The study found that a Black woman working full-time loses an estimated $1,274,000 in pay over a 40 year-long career, and a Latina earns $1.5 million less over the same amount of time.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a bill aiming to close the pay gap, and that would help victims of workplace discrimination and make it illegal to base the salary of a prospective employee on their past earnings. (In 2016, Mayor de Blasio signed an executive order banning city agencies from asking about the salary history of people applying for jobs, in an effort to curtail gender and racial pay gaps. Governor Andrew Cuomo is currently advocating for passing a Salary History ban that would make this illegal throughout New York State.) Vice Media recently paid out a $1.87 million settlement to 675 employees who filed a class action lawsuit against the company, stating in it that they had discriminated against them on the basis of their gender, and had relied on past earnings when doling out payment to employees.

It's a long time coming: Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro has been introducing this bill yearly, to no avail, for the past 12 years. And though gender-based pay discrimination has been illegal since the passing of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, there's still a long way to go until that's fully instilled in our work culture.

National Partnership President Debra L. Ness praised the new bill, known as the Paycheck Fairness Act, in a statement, but said that more needed to be done by legislators, including raising the minimum wage, bolstering pregnancy discrimination laws, legally penalizing sexual harassment further, and instituting family and medical leave across the nation to curb the gap from growing more. Research has also shown that workplaces with pay transparency, where everyone's salaries are known, have smaller pay gaps.

The economic equality network PowHer NY will host an Equal Pay Day rally today on the steps of City Hall, beginning at noon. They're encouraging people to wear red, in representation of how women are “still in the red” due to the wage gap.