Wage gap for Mississippi's women one of the nation's largest

Is Mississippi shortchanging women?

According to an article in mississippitoday.org, the answer is a resounding yes. The article is highlighting a report released in early 2018 in conjunction with Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. The campaign raises awareness of how long a black woman working full-time, year-round must work on average into the next year to catch up to the typical white man.

Mississippi’s wage gap, one of the nation’s largest, disproportionately affects women of color, the report shows. The gap is widest between black women working full-time, year-round and white, non-Hispanic men who do the same; in Mississippi, the wage gap between the two groups is 56 cents on the dollar based on median wages. (Only the District of Columbia has a larger gap, at 52 cents on the dollar.)

According to the report, which also finds that black women make up 19 percent of the state’s workforce, the disparity means a black woman could make $830,800 less than the average white man over the course of a 40-year career.

The research, part of a larger report on the economic security of Mississippi women authored by the Washington, D.C.,-based National Women’s Law Center and the Mississippi Women’s Economic Security Initiative, identifies two main problems underpinning the gender- and race-based wage gaps that affect Mississippians.