Closing the Gender Wage Gap

Mar 22, 2023

March 14 marks Equal Pay Day—the day that indicates how far into the year women must work in order to reach pay parity with their male counterparts from the previous year. Although there has been progress on some aspects of women’s rights over the decade, the pay gap between men and women has stubbornly persisted for two decades.

On average, women who are employed full time earn only 84% of what their male peers earn. The pay gap increases for women of color, with Black women earning 67% and Latina and Indigenous women earning 57% of what white, non-Hispanic men earn.

YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar spoke with Michele Kilpatrick, co-director of advocacy and mobilization at the Center for Popular Democracy, about closing the wage gap for Rising Up With Sonali.

The views expressed here and on Rising Up With Sonali do not necessarily reflect the opinion of YES! Media.

Sonali Kolhatkar is currently the racial justice editor at YES! Media and a writing fellow with Independent Media Institute. She was previously a weekly columnist for Truthdig.com. She is also the host and creator of Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. Sonali won First Place at the Los Angeles Press Club Annual Awards for Best Election Commentary in 2016. She also won numerous awards including Best TV Anchor from the LA Press Club and has also been nominated as Best Radio Anchor 4 years in a row. She is the author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence, and the co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women's Mission. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights, 2023). She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. She reflects on her professional path in her 2014 TEDx talk, “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host.” She can be reached at sonalikolhatkar.com