Latina Equal Pay

Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.

Dolores Huerta

BACKGROUND

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, amidst social, economic and ecological unrest a Latina-led movement emerged from the California fields that fed America, into the streets and to the front lines of the women’s and civil rights movements. Fighting for fair working conditions, pay and healthcare, Co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW), Dolores Huerta’s mantra Sí se puede ignited a generation of working class Latinos to organize international meetings, marches, protests, and boycotts. These intentional acts generated victories for UFW in the form of 30,000 new collective bargaining agreements that secured higher wages, improved working conditions (e.g. clean drinking water, toilets and protective clothing), health insurance benefits and established a federal credit union and union centers with medical care, pension, and voter registration services for members. The interconnected nature of the movement for pay equality provoked alliances with religious organizations, student and civil rights activists, and policy makers to advance the amendment of the voting rights act in 1975 to include protections and voter language assistance for voters with limited-English-proficiency.

We stand at another inflection point in history, compounding social, economic and ecological crises have made this a decisive moment in latino and latinx communities and our world. The issue of Latina Equal Pay remains the unfinished business of our generation. More than 50 years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Latina’s working full time, year-round and part-time earn only 54 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men. Latina inequality has had cascading effects on generational wealth and well-being. The most striking feature of this multifaceted problem cannot be understood in isolation. Twenty-first century Latina Equal Pay is interconnected and interdependent on systemic barriers that requires intentional solutions to economic and technological problems within the constraints of now.

Dare To Design Economic Justice Today. Si Se Puede!
Design is an intentional problem solving process that uses constraints to produce innovations that matter for the world. Design begins with asking provocative questions that help us envision a better future. The Designed By Us Design Corps dared to ask: What if Latina’s were compensated equally? Working with economists, data scientists and diversity, equity and inclusion program leaders at Fortune 500 corporations, we sought to answer that question with hard data, machine learning models and economic scenarios simulations. Each of the seven experiments proved that if US Latinas received equal compensaton, comparable to men, poverty for working women would be reduced by half, inflation would be reduced and the U.S. economy will add $482 billion which is equivalent to an increase of 2.8 percent of 2021 GDP.

This proves that when we bet big on Latinas we all flourish. Now we must get to the business of regenertively organizing our world with Latinas at the center of a new age of resilience. This is why the Design Corps is building the LatinaExchange.dao and the LatinaEqualPay.wallet. This is an open invitation to join the Design Corps, labor leaders and civil rights organizers to collectively transform a complex crisis into enduring Equal Pay solutions that reinvent how every Latina is compensated everywhere, everyday.

Joanna Peña-Bickley
Chief Design Officer, Design Corps

The LatinaExchage.DAO is a Web3 marketplace of Latina innovators advancing pay equity.
We will be launching in 2023.

LATINA EQUAL PAY RESEARCH

During our initial research the Design Corps uncovered 42 million articles and studies revealing implications of Latinas inequity in pay. We are sharing the following curated list of studies to enable understanding, agenda setting and orchestration of efforts.

2022 World Inequity Report: https://wir2022.wid.world/
gender wage gap can be linked to childhood: https://www.uea.ac.uk/news/-/article/gender-pay-gap-linked-to-unpaid-chores-in-childhood
Lean in – Facts and Figures: htthttps://leanin.org/data-about-the-gender-pay-gap-for-latinas
National Women’s Law Center – Equal Pay for Latinas Facts and Figures: https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Equal-Pay-for-Latina-Women-2018-English.pdf
AAUW- Latinas and the Pay Gap: https://www.aauw.org/resources/article/latinas-and-the-pay-gap/#:~:text=Because%20of%20the%20gender%20pay,earnings%20of%20a%20white%20man
National Partnership for Women and Families – Effects of the Latina Wage Gap: https://www.nationalpartnership.org/our-work/resources/economic-justice/fair-pay/latinas-wage-gap.pdf
American Progress – Economic Fallout of Covid19: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2020/04/14/483125/economic-fallout-coronavirus-people-color/
The Leadership Conference: https://civilrights.org/edfund/resource/wage-gap-latina-workers-still-54-cents-thats-troubling/
Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE): https://www.latinas.org/eslr2020
Citi Bank Equitable Pay: https://qz.com/work/1549162/the-median-gender-pay-gap-arjuna-capital-wants-the-data-revealed/
The 19th. (August 2020). America’s First Female Recession. Retrieved from https://19thnews.org/2020/08/americas-first-female-recession
Pew Research Center. (2020). U.S. Latinos among hardest hit by pay cuts, job losses due to coronavirus. Washington, DC.
Gonzalez, D., et.al. (May 2020). Hispanic Adults in Families with Noncitizens Disproportionately Feel the Economic Fallout from COVID-19. Urban Institute. State of Hispanic Wealth Report. http://hispanicwealthproject.org/downloads/2019-SHWR-Annual-Report.pdf
PPIC. (May 2019). Just the FACTS, Immigrants in California. Retrieved from https://www.ppic.org/publication/immigrants-in-california
The COVID Tracking Project. Retrieved September 7, 2020 from https://covidtracking.com/race/dashboard#state-ca
California Community Poll. (February 2020). Strategies 360. Retrieved from https://www.strategies360.com/landing/californiapolling

The Latino Corporate Directors Association. (LCDA). (July 2020). California Company Boards. Retrieved from https://latinocorporatedirectors.org/ca_public_company_boards.php
U.S. Census Bureau. (2019). Vintage 2018 Population Estimates.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2020). Demographic Turning Points for the U.S.: Population Projections for 2020 to 2060.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2018). American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates. [Tables B01002, B01002I, and B01002H].
U.S. Census Bureau. ACS 1-year estimates. [Table B01001I].
U.S. Census Bureau. (2019). Vintage 2018 Population Estimates.
State of California, Department of Finance. (January 2020). Vintage 2019 Population Projections.
U.S. Census Bureau. ACS 1-year estimates. [Table B01001I].
U.S. Census Bureau. (2018). ACS 1-year estimates. [Tables B01002I, B01001I, B05003I].
U.S. Census Bureau. (2018). ACS 1-year estimates. [Tables B01002I, B01002H, B01002B and B01002D].
Data provided by Grassroots Lab.
Data provided by NALEO Educational Fund.
California Company Board Report. (March 2020). 233 CA-Based Public Company Boards
Lack Racial or Ethnic Diversity. Retrieved from https://www.latinocorporatedirectors.org/ca_public_company_boards.php
Parent Institute for Quality Education. (2020). Lifting Up Voices: CA Families in Cycle of
Poverty, English Learner & Immigrant. Retrieved from https://www.piqe.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/FINAL-LIFTING-UP-VOICES.pdf
Taie, S., and Goldring, R. (2020). Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary and Secondary School Teachers in the United States: Results from the 2017–18 National Teacher and Principal Survey First Look (NCES 2020- 142). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved June 1, 2020 from https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2020142 Table 3.
Parent Institute for Quality Education. (2020). Lifting Up Voices: CA Families in Cycle of Poverty, English Learner & Immigrant. Retrieved from https://www.piqe.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/FINAL-LIFTING-UP-VOICES.pdf
McKinsey & Company. (2020). https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insights/covid-19-and-student-learning-in-the-united-states-the-hurt-could-last-a-lifetime
Parent Institute for Quality Education. (2020). Lifting Up Voices: CA Families in Cycle of Poverty, English Learner & Immigrant. Retrieved from https://www.piqe.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/FINAL-LIFTING-UP-VOICES.pdf
U.S. Census Bureau. (2018). ACS 1-year estimates. [Tables B14007I and B14007].