Moneda Moves (85): It's time to pay up and bring others with us
Feliz viernes, Moneda Moves readers.
You may have seen this making the rounds on social, and we’re here to remind you: We’ve made it to another Equal Pay Day this week, but truth be told is that for women of color, that day is far later into the year.
In short, it’s time to PAY WOMEN more. Plain and simple. Though the wage gap is anything but — and it’s important to make the distinction as we discuss how we help everyone rise.
The chart above from The Center For American Progress only begins to tell the complex story of the wage gap for women in the United States. As people live intersectional experiences, like being transgender or immigrant women, the pay disparities change and widen.
➡️ And as CAP rightfully points out: The 90-cent earnings figure for Asian women is an average and underestimates the wage gap experienced by women belonging to many Asian subgroups. For example, for every $1 earned by white men, Filipino women earned 83 cents, Tongan women earned 75 cents, and Nepali women earned 50 cents.
While yes, there are many factors driving the wage gap like difference in industries or experience, education, and number of hours worked, the biggest wage gaps for women of color tend to reflect the side effects of negative gender, ethnic and racial bias.
It’s time to press on, mi gente, to hold institutions accountable to close the gap but also to help women across the way and those with even bigger pay gaps rise.
Con poder,
Lyanne
Headlines to put on your radar.
Puerto Rico gets over $900M in education funds previously restricted by Trump admin🇵🇷: Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona announced this week that Puerto Rico now has access to $912 million in federal funds. This comes less than two weeks after the island reopened a number of schools for the first time since the pandemic started. NBC Latino reports that The U.S. Department of Education will decide with local officials how the money will be spent to tackle academic, social, emotional and mental health needs of students in the U.S. territory.
Paying attention to data can help reach racial equity, says Bloomberg CityLab⚖️: This article posits that using data, cities can better understand where need is. This is the kind of data that can help better serve small businesses, youth of color and their challenges with education and better understanding how policy disproportionately impacts diverse communities. Read more here.
A new fintech company providing a digital banking option for Latinx communities💵: A new Miami-based fintech company is focused on serving the Hispanic and Latino communities and looking to help increase access to digital banking one card and one app at a time. Cuentas is providing access to the U.S. financial system to those who cannot open a traditional bank account, or prefer not to bank at a traditional financial institution. The full story is in The Street.
Rising voices in business, fintech, entrepreneurship and beyond.
✨This Week✨ Master Charla on money at The Mujerista
Our partners at The Mujerista had us on this week to talk all things dinero with this lineup of jefas, and you can bet we have the takeaways:
In this Master Charla, we discussed the importance of investing, equal pay, and creating generational wealth. Featured as guest speakers were: Lyanne Alfaro of Moneda Moves podcast (myself!) ; Vanessa Duran of DCC Accounting; and Athena Lent of Money Smart Latina.
A few takeaways from this brilliant evening:
On the wealth gap: Ways to help ourselves in the short-term is to involve strategic investing and focusing on establishing generational wealth. Negotiation and checking our pay against market value matters. Diversifying our income can also be greatly beneficial. However, addressing the wage gap will take a concerted effort to close the wage gap from policy, education and pay overall.
On learning about personal finance: Our biggest asset is time. It’s important to make time to understand our money and how we can make it work for us. Tools that can help us along the way in addition to educational material are money coaches to help us walk through our goals.
On your plan with money: It’s important to remember that personal finance is personal. We must understand our relationship with money and plan for the kind of life we envision accordingly.
On levers to pull at work: Again, this is very much personal, but we should explore our work benefits as much as we can. Look into matching for 401(k)s, Roths, Employee Stock Purchase Programs and understand our insurance plans fully.
Thank you for joining us! Until next Friday, catch us here on Moneda Moves.