Equal Pay Day is the symbolic day dedicated to raising awareness of the gender pay gap. The date changes each year because it symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. The exact day differs by year and by country, but what the day fails to represent is the huge wage gap for women of color.

Let’s be clear, it is deplorable that it takes more than 3 months into the next year for women to earn what men earned the prior year, based upon a $0.20 difference in earnings, but for woman of color, our deficit is far greater. Equal pay day for African American women is in August and for Latina women it doesn’t come until November. Women represent nearly 50% of the U.S. workforce so with increasing numbers of families relying on women’s paychecks for their livelihood, we must acknowledge and address the wage gap for the sake of our financial stability.