Is Mississippi shortchanging women?
According to an article in mississippitoday.org, the answer is a resounding yes. The article is
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.