NOW Celebrates Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) Women’s Equal Pay Day

The fight to achieve pay equity for women and LGBTQIA+ individuals, particularly women of color, is an integral platform of NOW's intersectional issues agenda.

August 28 has been designated #NHPIWomensEqualPayDay to raise awareness about the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander wage gap and how NHPI women are often rendered invisible in mainstream conversations about it.

For every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men working full time, year-round, NHPI women were only paid 66 cents. But when looking at all NHPI women earners (full-time, part-time, and part-year/seasonal), they bring home a mere 60 cents for every dollar earned by their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts.

One advocate for NHPI communities, Estella Owoimaha-Church, Executive Director of Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC) says,

"The wage gap we experience as Pasifika women and workers is a single strand in a larger net of economic injustices that limit our ability to care for ourselves, families, and communities. Ensnared in such a wide net of structural inequities, the conversation begins with equal pay but does not end here."

NOW members know that there are many, many conversations about equal pay that begin with one inequality and intersect with others. That's why NOW is working to widen the lens of the public's understanding of this issue by showing the need for long-term policy solutions like the Paycheck Fairness Act, the Equality Act, the Healthy Families Act, and others.

Women are denied equal rights when they are paid less than men for the same or comparable work, denied promotions and training opportunities, shut out of high-paying jobs and occupations, subjected to sexual harassment, and penalized for taking time off to care for their families, and women in minimum wage jobs, women of color, and immigrant women are often the worst affected.

On today's NHPI Women's Equal Pay Day, we can stand with this community by having more conversations about the NHPI wage gap and doing our part to bring what has been invisible out in the open, where change can finally happen.