Burmese-American women suffer the widest wage gap among all Asian American ethnic communities compared to white men, according to statistics highlighted by several civil rights and labor groups last week in honor of Equal Pay Day. The groups said wage gaps experienced by women of most Asian American ethnicities challenge the notion that Asian Americans are a “model minority.”
Equal Pay Day is observed in the United States on a different day every year, depending on how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year, based on US Census Bureau statistics. But the interpretation of these statistics has proved contentious. While women in general earned 80 cents for every dollar earned by a white man in 2017, black women earned 63 cents on the dollar, while Asian American women earned 87 cents.
On April 10 – a day determined by the 80-cents-on-the-dollar wage gap for women in general – groups including the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), and the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF) took to social media to point out that the 87-cent wage gap for Asian American women – the smallest wage gap among the broader ethnic categories – does not reflect the experiences of most ethnic communities within the Asian American category.
For example, the statistic is skewed upward by the fact that women of Indian, Taiwanese, Sri Lankan, Chinese, and Japanese descent in the United States all earn more than white men, on average. This masks the reality that women in a far higher number of smaller ethnic categories earn less than 70 cents on the dollar compared to white men. Most of these are Southeast Asian women.
The 153,262 Burmese women in the United States earn, on average, 51 cents on the dollar compared to white men, while Laos women earn 60 cents, Cambodian and Vietnamese women earn 62 cents, and Indonesian women earn 67 cents.
These numbers highlight the importance of further disaggregation when interpreting statistics about broad demographic categories. Several Asian American lawmakers commented on the issue:
AND, while AAPI women make 87 cents to the dollar on average, the larger picture is very different. Vietnamese women make only 62 cents, Hmong women 59 cents and Burmese women only 51 cents to a white man’s dollar.
Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander women face huge gaps. pic.twitter.com/icjGEL4alO
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) April 10, 2018
Unequal wages also harm minority communities, including #AAPI women. The wage gap is particularly acute for Southeast Asian women in the United States. It’s time to close the #GenderWageGap https://t.co/D5euPDbnd6 (2/2)
— Grace Meng (@RepGraceMeng) April 10, 2018
NAPAWF led a previous social media campaign on Feb. 22 – the day Asian American women in general women would have had to work to earn what men earned in the previous year.
All of the groups involved in these two campaigns aim to dismantle the myth that Asian Americans are a “model minority” that “proves” that other minorities can advance without government interventions into structural inequalities.
Check out the full breakdown of the wage gaps endured by various Asian American communities here.
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