Researchers have long recognized a gender-based pay gap in California, and Sacramento has many times acknowledged it. In a 2024 news release based on 2021 pay data, the state’s Civil Rights Department reported that overall, women in California make 81 cents for every dollar earned by men.
The gap, though, becomes much more pronounced when it’s differentiated by race and ethnicity. And a new study brings into bold relief the long odds that women of color in California face in closing it.
The numbers are jolting. For every dollar paid to a white man in the state in 2022, a Black woman was paid only 60 cents — and a Black single mother drew even less, 56 cents, according to data analyzed by the California Budget & Policy Center.
To put that in living terms, consider that the median wage paid to a white California man in 2022 was $90,000. For a Black woman, it was $54,000. Black single moms, whom the report says are the heads of 67% of Black households in the state, earned just $50,000.
Black single moms earn 56 cents for every dollar paid a white male employee in California.
“There are lots of reasons why,” said Hannah Orbach-Mandel, a policy analyst with the CBPC, which co-produced the report with the California Black Women’s Collective Empowerment Institute (CABWCEI).
Among those reasons, Orbach-Mandel said, are forms of racism and sexism “that might not appear explicitly so” — like troublingly low rates of job promotion for women of color. The conversation is also nuanced; Black women and Latinas in California not only face a massive wage disadvantage compared with white men, but badly trail both white and Asian women in their relative earnings, too.
There are ways to close the gap, and state government can play a critical role. If the status quo holds, though, the report suggests that Black women won’t reach the same earnings as white men in California for nearly another century — the year 2121 to be exact, according to the CPBC.
The study draws from last September’s installment of the California Women’s Well-Being Index, which the CPBC publishes every few years, using U.S. Census data and individual surveys to form overall impressions of how women are faring in each of the state’s 58 counties.
A few factors contributing to the wage gap seem obvious. White men dominate the highest-paying jobs in California, according to state data, and they’ve long been overrepresented in C-suite positions. Women of color, on the other hand, are disproportionately represented in service sectors, including notoriously low-paying jobs in home health care. Nationally, Black women comprise 30% of the home health care workforce despite representing a little more than 6% of the labor force overall.
There’s also the matter of who gets promoted up the company ladder, as workers grind toward better-paying workplace positions. According to a 2023 study by the consulting group McKinsey & Company, for every 100 men promoted on the first rung of that ladder, to manager, 87 women were also promoted. But for Latinas, the figure was only 76, and for Black women it was 54.
A new report suggests that Black women won’t reach the same earnings as white men in California until the year 2121.
“When you see more white women and Asian women in roles that actually pay more, part of that is the nature of the type of work they do, relative to the kinds of jobs you traditionally see Black women in,” said Kellie Todd Griffin, founder of the Black Women’s Collective. “But the other part is that Black women, regardless of their educational attainment, are promoted less in the workplace than their other female counterparts.”
In a survey released by the collective earlier this month, more than a third of Black women said they’d been overlooked for promotions or job advancement opportunities at their workplaces. Nearly half said they believed their race or ethnicity had led to them being discriminated against or treated unfairly at work.
“There is obviously systemic racism in the hiring process,” Griffin said. Among Black women, though, the collective’s director said it’s often true that they also lack a full understanding of the kinds of jobs, promotions and pay upgrades they could be pursuing.
“As [California Secretary of State] Shirley Weber always says, with Black women it’s not a glass ceiling, it’s a concrete ceiling,” Griffin said. “You can’t even see the possibilities, so you don’t know when you go into the workplace what you can — and should — be paid.”
California government has taken steps to remedy some of the factors most clearly connected with the state’s wage gaps. Among the most prominent is the pay transparency law, which beginning in 2023 has required companies with at least 15 workers to include pay ranges in all job postings.
Larger companies also have to provide the state Civil Rights Department with more detailed wage information each year, and the law allows workers to ask what the pay range is for their own position, which could come in handy during a job review.
But if legislators are serious about closing wage gaps, they’ll need to consider tightening those requirements. More than 90% of California businesses have 20 or fewer workers, and the vast majority far fewer than that.
“Black women often work in nonprofit fields, service fields, [which] may only have five or six employees,” Griffin said. “We’d like to see the government decrease that reporting requirement number below 15 so that it’ll be more comprehensive.”
The Budget & Policy Center’s report further suggests that the state support more workforce development for Black women in high-growth and nontraditional industries like tech, higher-level health care and green energy. Griffin’s collective also has a privately funded initiative through California State University, Dominguez Hills that conducts leadership certificate programs for Black women, the goal being, she said, to “get them the resources to get further, faster.”
There are some conditions, of course, that won’t soon be remedied. California’s skyrocketing cost of housing consistently ratchets up pressure on workers to pay their rent or mortgage, and Orbach-Mandel noted that Black single mothers often cite child care costs as a significant impediment to progress.
“Increasing access to affordable child care is something that would have so many far-reaching impacts that even if it would take time, it is always something worth pushing for — for all families in the state,” Orbach-Mandel said. It is also an incremental step in the larger struggle for women of color in California to close the wage gap — one of many that will ultimately be required.
