Opinion: Black Women’s Equal Pay Day: “The check is long overdue”
Let’s be clear: Black Women’s Equal Pay Day is not just a date on the calendar—it’s a glaring receipt, marked by exhaustion, resilience and the deep cost of being chronically underpaid.
Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, observed on July 10, 2025, symbolizes how far into the year Black women must work to earn what white, non-Hispanic men earned by the end of 2024, highlighting a staggering reality: Black women who work full-time year round make just 66 cents on the dollar nationally. Over a 40-year career, that disparity can result in nearly $1 million in lost earnings.
In the immortal words of Fannie Lou Hamer, “We are sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
In Mississippi, the gap is even wider: Black women here, including part-time and seasonal workers, earn just 53 cents on the dollar. And as if things couldn’t get worse, as of June 2025, the unemployment rate for Black women, not just in Mississippi but nationwide, rose to 6.1 percent —up from 5.1 percent in March, which was the highest jump of any demographic group, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But here’s the thing: We’ve done enough explaining about why closing the wage gap among Black women and white men is critical, pointing to its direct impact on our families’ economic stability, access to essential healthcare services, safe housing, childcare and overall safety. Bottom line, the check is long overdue, and now—particularly on the heels of vast Medicaid cuts and SNAP reductions among other life shifting setbacks—Black women must demand it.
In this demand for equal pay, we must push each other to make this an issue in the boardrooms, break rooms and, most of all, at the ballot box. Nationally, we must continue to push for policies like the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would strengthen the Equal Pay Act by banning salary history questions, enforcing transparency and protecting workers from retaliation when they talk about pay.
In Mississippi, we are hard at work in our effort to strengthen our state’s so-called “equal pay” law, an outrageous sham and devastating setback for women in the state—especially Black women, shortchanging them thousands of dollars each year due to gender and racial wage gaps. Under the guise of equity, this law rubber stamps employers’ decisions to pay women less than men for equal work by explicitly allowing them to rely on applicants’ prior salary history and on continuity of employment history to set pay. It suggests that it would be acceptable to compensate a woman less than a man performing the same work simply because she may have taken time away to welcome a child or care for a sick loved one. Such a precedent only serves to further entrench gender pay disparities across Mississippi’s workforce, similar to other workforces across the South, unfairly penalizing women for the roles and responsibilities society so often expects them to bear.
We must also advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment to actually enshrine gender equity into the U.S. Constitution, giving Black women stronger tools to fight wage discrimination head-on.
And we can’t forget to call upon the powerful legislative tools we have, including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which ensures that workers can file wage discrimination claims within 180 days of receiving a discriminatory paycheck, rather than from the date of the discriminatory decision. This law extends the time window for workers to seek redress for pay discrimination, helping to address ongoing pay disparities based on gender, race, or other protected characteristics.
We must educate workers about their rights under federal law, as well as train our young people on how to negotiate their wages.
And when elected officials fail to act in the interest of our pocketbooks, we must speak up—and loudly. We must urge each other to call these lawmakers about it. To write them. To show up to their offices. To support allies such as Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Washington Sen. Patty Murray, who have long fought for equal pay for Black women, while holding accountable those who have not.
This fight is far from theoretical for me. I grew up in Jackson in the 1970s, with my mom and aunt hiding me in utility closets as a toddler while they cleaned state agency buildings across the street from the State Capitol—the same Capitol where lawmakers have repeatedly refused to raise the minimum wage for its people. This wasn’t neglect. It was survival. Just like the mothers and aunties of today, they worked multiple jobs, barely scraping by, and still came up short. On top of that, they were penalized for asking questions about their pay, or for taking time off work to safely have their children. Or they were docked pay because they dared to serve as caregivers to family members who needed them, and passed over for well-deserved promotions, all while being gaslit into believing they just “needed to work harder” to earn what they were worth.
As Black women, we have long been told we must “lean in,” work smarter, or just do more—as if doing these things will close the wage gap. But the truth is, this gap has never been about effort. It’s rooted in good old-fashioned racial and gender discrimination. Since the very beginning, Black women have been underpaid, undervalued, and overrepresented in pay inequity, many of us barely making ends meet in the 40 lowest-paying jobs in America—roles that often lack even the most basic protections for us and our families, like health insurance or paid leave.
Enough.
Across the South, Black women—including Rep. Zakiya Summers and Sen. Angela Turner Ford, who are both in the Mississippi Legislature and are vocal advocates for equal pay and workplace equity—are championing policies to fight salary secrecy, expand paid leave and Medicaid equitable parental support, and centering the needs of working families. They, alongside the rest of us, reject the bald-faced lie that there’s just “not enough in the budget” for Black women around pay, reminding anyone who’ll listen just how critical our labor has been to this country, and just how much the U.S. economy depends on us continuing to help hold it up.
Black women must demand that the Trump Administration and Congress end the attack on Black women’s economic security by once again embracing diversity, equity and inclusion programs, not continuing its slashing of federal jobs, and working with intention to strengthen the workplace rights that benefit all Americans. The check is long overdue, and we’re not leaving the table without it.
A version of this op-ed was originally published in the July 10, 2025, Madamenoire.
Cassandra Overton Welchlin is the executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, where she advocates for the economic security and civic engagement of Black women and girls. With more than two decades of experience in policy reform and grassroots organizing, she has been featured in national media and received multiple awards for her leadership. Cassandra is a licensed social worker, a fellow of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She lives in Mississippi with her husband and three children.
Image: Cassandra Overton Welchlin (via Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable)
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