Lower pay, more harassment: How work in America has failed women of color

Black and Hispanic women are most affected by the gender wage gap, especially when compared to white men: black women make 67% of what white men earn, and Hispanic women get 58%.

Black women need to work an extra 233 days to earn what white men earn. Hispanic women, particularly Latinas, need to work 324 days.

Indian-American and Chinese-American women - who are part of the wealthiest ethnic groups in the US - out-earn white men, according to data from the US Census Bureau.

Yet if you look at other ethnic groups within the Asian-American community, there are far greater disparities: Burmese-American women make just 50 cents for every dollar that white men earn, and Thai-American women make 60 cents on the dollar.

Filipino-American women, one of the largest Asian-American demographics in the US, earn 83 cents for what white men earn, and Bangladeshi-American women earn 69 cents.

Workers of color - specifically, black workers, Hispanic workers, and Asian-American workers - are more likely to get paid poverty-level wages than white workers, according to a 2018 analysis by the liberal-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute.

Black and Hispanic women are also overrepresented in low-paying work.

Black women, for instance, are more likely to work in food service, domestic work, and home healthcare - all some of the worst paying occupations in the country. They are additionally less likely to work in high-paying tech fields, the Institute for Women's Policy Research reports.

Hispanic people, meanwhile, account for just 15% of all jobs, but make up 36% of all high school dropouts - a group that typically gets low-paying work. As a result, largely Hispanic women make up 43% of all maids and house cleaners in the country, according to a 2013 report from The Atlantic.

Black and Hispanic women working hourly wages have the most irregular schedules, according to a New York Times article citing data from Shift Project. Workers of color were 30 percent more likely than white workers to have had a shift canceled in the last month - even if both groups had the same work experience and education.

There are consequences from having precarious schedules: night shift workers and people who have irregular hours are also 33% more likely to suffer from depression. The children of these employees have worse behavior and inconsistent child care, the Times reported.

Just 1 in 25 C-suite executive-level managers is a woman of color, a new report from McKinsey and LeanIn.org on the state of Women in the Workplace 2019 found. White women make up 18% of C-suite executives, while white men make up the vast majority at 68%.

Women of color aren't just greatly out-numbered at the top - they make up 18% of entry-level jobs, 12 percentage points less than white women. They then face greater challenges to getting that next promotion: McKinsey found that for every 100 entry-level men who are promoted to manager, just 68 Latinas and 58 black women are promoted.

Women of color overall are more likely to report sexual harassment at work, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Gender, Work and Organization.

Women of color low-wage sectors are particularly vulnerable. Black women and Latinas working in fast food, for instance, are more likely to report negative sexual attention than white women.

Women of color also face higher non-sexual harassment, like bullying. An analysis of survey responses from 800 employees found ethnic minority women suffered higher rates of harassment at work when compared to white people and men of color.

Researchers hypothesized this phenomenon occurs because women of color face a "double jeopardy" of being both women and ethnic minorities, groups more susceptible to harassment.

To attend four-year colleges, 86.6% of black students borrow federal loans, compared to 59.9% of white students.

Black students have a harder time paying them off, too: one in two black students defaulted on their student loans between 2003 and 2015, compared to just 21.5% of white students and 36.1% of Latino students.

Black women also take a longer time paying off their loans, research finds - in part due to making less money out of college. Black college graduates ages 21 to 24 earn $3.34 less per hour than their white peers, reported Jillian Berman for MarketWatch, citing an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

Starting your own business is harder if you're a woman of color.

Citing various sources, Entrepreneur's Nina Zipkin reported that black women founders have gotten just .0006% of VC money since 2009. Roughly 1% of all Latino or Latina businesses between 2007 and 2012 used VC funding. And just 15% of investment professionals are Asian-American.

For this reason, Arlan Hamilton - one of VC's only queer black women - started Backstage Capital, a firm that invests only in minority-owned ventures.

Asian Americans are the least likely racial group to get promoted into tech management positions - despite being the most-likely group hired into entry-level positions.

For women, it's even worse: out of all the Asian-American women working in tech, only 1 in 285 is an executive, a study from professional group Ascend found.