KOJO NNAMDIWelcome back. Today is Equal Pay Day for American women. That's the day that their earnings symbolically catch up with the amount men earned in the previous calendar year. That's because American women, on average, make 80 cents for every full dollar that their male counterparts make. That disparity varies based on race, industry, motherhood status and geographic region. And if you're a woman of color or Hispanic, what you make compared to the average man drops significantly. What creates the pay gap, and what policies and practices could help to close it?

KOJO NNAMDIWe look at how these issues play out here in the DC region. Joining me in studio is Kim Churches. Kim Churches is the chief executive officer of the American Association of University Women, a nonprofit that does research, education and advocacy work about gender equity. Kim Churches, thank you very much for joining us.

KIM CHURCHESThanks for having me.

NNAMDIExplain what Equal Pay Day is, please. Why does it fall today, and who are we talking about?

CHURCHESYeah, well, essentially, for women working full time, compared to their male colleagues, this is the day that, symbolically, we catch up with what men working full time in 2018 earned. And it takes us another three months to catch up to those earnings. Now, we're talking about this at a macro level, but frankly, in 2019, it's abominable that we're still having to talk about issues like Equal Pay Day. So, our work is to really eradicate the need for it, so that women can earn -- based on their education level, their strengths, their skills, their abilities -- exactly what their male counterparts can in every type of job and field in every geography, whether you're hourly or salaried.

NNAMDIAnd the statistics we just gave are for all American women in the aggregate. What happens when you break it down into subcategories by race or motherhood status?

CHURCHESMm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. So, sadly, as you said in the opening, women of color are far worse off when it comes to the pay gap. So, African American women in this country earn on average 61 cents on the dollar, compared to men. And for Latinas, it's 53 cents on the dollar. And, frankly, when you're thinking about women in the workplace, overall, when you're mothers, we face a motherhood penalty. Essentially saying that when you become mothers and you're working, they're saying that you can't produce at the same level, or you have to take off more time for childcare, or the like. Whereas men face a fatherhood bonus. They're actually seen as more family-oriented, more productive, more stalwart. And they end up earning more money in salary and bonuses over time.

NNAMDIThere are also geographic variations. Can you give us a sense of what the equal pay landscape looks like for this area -- DC, Maryland and Virginia -- how we compare to the rest of the country?

CHURCHESYou bet. So, for a major metropolitan area, we're tracking pretty well, like other metropolitan areas like New York and L.A., San Francisco. That said, so, in our region, we still are spacing a 14-cent gap. So, essentially, overall, in our metropolitan area, women are earning 86 cents on the dollar compared to men. But that's still a 14-cent gap that shouldn't be still prevalent today. It's actually, overall, DC, for the District itself, women are paid 89 cents for every dollar. In the state of Maryland, which has some of the best pay equity laws in our nation, it's actually one of only seven states that got our AAW top ranking. Women earn 86 cents on the dollar. So, it's certainly better.

CHURCHESIn Virginia, it's actually the worst in our region. They have some of the weakest pay equity laws in our nation. It's one of only 17 states that got our weak rating, and they earn 79 cents on the dollar, on average. There's lots of different factors for this, Kojo. It's education, job choices, etcetera, but it also kind of boils down to basic bias and discrimination, far too often.

NNAMDILet's bring Doris Quintanilla into this conversation. Doris Quintanilla is the cofounder and executive director of the Melanin Collective, which organizes workshops about workplace issues for women of color. Doris Quintanilla, thank you so much for joining us.

DORIS QUINTANILLAThank you for having me.

NNAMDIWe've been talking about this issue on the policy level, but the pay gap, in fact, happens to individuals. As a woman of color, in the workplace, you've had experiences in your career where that comes up. What moments stick out for you?

QUINTANILLAI think the most important moment was when I started my career, because that kind of sets up what you're going to get paid at every job. I started working in Oakland at (unintelligible), and I was a temp. When they offered me the position as a community health educator, the HR lady called me on the phone, and she was kind of, like, this is the position, this is what you will do. Okay. And so now we're going to start -- we're going to pay you 41,000, and just stayed silent. And I didn't know why she was silent, and I was, like, oh. Okay, great. And she was, like, oh, okay, and then moved on. But it was like a very surprising -- I always remembered that, as why did that happen, and then later, I realized she was waiting for me to negotiate. But I was a recent grad, and I had no idea, so I just didn't say anything.

NNAMDIIn addition, several years ago, you had a period where you were recovering from a serious injury. Did that figure in how you approach discussions about pay at work?

QUINTANILLAYeah, definitely. I suffered a traumatic brain injury while working for an organization abroad, and they ended up letting me go because I was taking too long to heal. So, I ended up applying for another organization back into the sexual reproductive health, and I remember telling myself, I just, like, need any job. I need health insurance to take care of my injury. It doesn't matter. And when my boss offered me the position after like three or four steps in the application process, she said, I'm going to offer you something, but I need you to negotiate with me. And I was, like, oh, she -- you know, my friends had already said, you better negotiate. But I was like in this moment of vulnerability, and I was like, no, I just need anything. And she literally -- she's like the best boss I've ever had and, yeah, I was really lucky to have her. And she's...

NNAMDIShe said, you better negotiate. (laugh)

QUINTANILLAYeah. (laugh)

NNAMDIKim, generally speaking, we just talked about Doris' injury, what role does ability and disability play in the pay gap?

CHURCHESOh, you bet it does, because, look, we're complex human beings. And so Doris, as a woman of color, faces one strike against her, as we look at women in the workplace, just by her gender and by her race and ethnicity. Then you add on to that disability, and all of those implicit and, frankly, conscious biases and basic discrimination practices can go into play. So, for example, our studies have shown, our research has shown that people with disabilities really only earn 68 cents on the dollar, compared to nondisabled people. So, for Doris, this is real, and it's right into her pocketbook.

NNAMDIAlso joining us in studio is Liz Cox. Liz Cox is the Taproom manager at Red Bear Brewing. And, Liz, thank you very much for joining us.

LIZ COXThank you for having me.

NNAMDIA lot of discussion about the pay gap centers on women who are in salaried office jobs, but there are a lot of women in industries like the one you work in -- hospitality and restaurants -- who also experience it. Do you ever feel kind of left out of the discussion?

COXOh, definitely. You know, over 70 percent of tipped workers are female, and restaurants are some of the fastest growing sectors in America. The Atlantic had a great piece, how restaurants are the new factories. And one place you see a huge disparity is in between tipped workers and managers, right. While 70 percent of women are -- or of tipped workers are women, you see that drop significantly when you get to management. And you also see, you know, we're in an industry that doesn't come with the usual perks that an office job or salaried job comes with. Most of us don't get benefits, health insurance, that type of thing. So, our salary, our money is all we have when it comes to our jobs.

NNAMDIWhat are some of the unique pressures or challenges related to the pay gap faced by women working in restaurants?

COXDefinitely. Number one is, you know, labor law workers rights are dramatically under-enforced. You don't see -- there is no wage theft prevention occurring. There is no -- OSHA violations happen all the time in restaurants, and it just leads to this sense of, you know, nobody's-really-going-to-come-help-us-type of situation. So, you're very much on your own.

NNAMDIOnto the phones, here is Dana in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Dana, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DANAHey, Kojo. Love your show. I'd like to push back a little bit on this idea that the only reason why women make less on average than men is because of discrimination. Men tend to work longer hours. They tend to work more dangerous jobs. They don't generally make the choice to take time out of work to raise a family, which I understand probably needs some more encouragement from policies, and what have you. But, yeah, I think also that it's worth mentioning that women aged, I think it was, 25 to 35, living in urban areas, actually earn 11 percent more than their male counterparts. And I just wanted to get your...

NNAMDIDo you remember what the source of that statistic was?

DANAI believe that is New York Times. I read that article maybe a year or two ago. So, it's recent data.

NNAMDIWell, allow me to have Kim Churches respond.

CHURCHESYeah, thanks so much for calling in. Actually, it's not just bias and discrimination that cause the pay gap, and really, we're talking in macro terms. But let's talk a little bit more in micro terms about this, about women's choices, how we work, flexible leave schedule in and out of the workforce, etcetera. Even if you compare, as I like to say, a Fuji apple to a Fuji apple, so if women, which right now we're attaining more of the undergraduate degrees than our male counterparts, and have for decades -- so women earn about 56 percent of the nation's undergraduate degrees. But even one year out of college, they're already earning less on average than their male counterparts with the same degree level.

CHURCHESSimilarly, if you look at different industries -- so let's look at Fuji apple to Fuji apple. So, take food service prep, almost at parity, where men and women are earning the same thing. But you've got a basement floor there called minimum wage, so you can only go so low, right. So, in a lot of the lower-level paying jobs, you're reaching -- retail food service, etcetera, you're reaching near parity. But even in industries dominated for decades by women, like nursing, you see a gender pay gap in the 7 to 8 percent range.

CHURCHESSome of the worst areas of gender pay gap exist in very high-paying, highly educated positions. So, physicians, surgeons, financial managers, investment bankers, that's just a real issue. And what happens is, even in great employers who intend well, if they're not putting sunshine on it, sunshine can be the world's greatest disinfectant. Transparency helps to uncover a lot of issues. So, if you're putting forward basic pay audits on a regular basis, you can get to this to make sure you're taking care of any potential issues of a pay gap at every single level of a job.

NNAMDIDana, thank you for your call. We move on now to Messel in Alexandria, Virginia. Messel, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

MICHELLEYes, hi, it's Michelle. Just wanted to follow up on what the speaker's saying. My first job was with IBM as a computer science major, etcetera. I was hired into a -- at that time, they had a training program, and everyone was equal. And there was only one woman in it, and she told me, at the time, she said, beware that they pay men more than women. And she had just gotten a mistaken paycheck that was swapped between her and a male. They were both hired into the same program. He was paid a third more, even though she had come in as the top in her class in Yale, and he had come in sort of as a middle ender.

MICHELLEI didn't really believe it until I spent a couple years, had done a huge project, had spent, you know, 80-hour weeks sleeping in my chair and did a worldwide installation that was the first one ever done for IBM. It came for award time, they were talking about who this person was that was going to win the award, and then they said, and the winner goes to, and they named a man in my team who actually had been out of the office for the last five months on a sabbatical. And they gave it to him.

MICHELLEAnd so, afterwards, I went to talk to the...

NNAMDI(overlapping) I was about to ask, Michelle, what was your response? (laugh)

MICHELLEYeah. I said, okay. So, how did this happen, when this was my project? And they said, well, he's a breadwinner of the family. So, we're going to give it to him. And I said, we're giving it to breadwinners? I thought we were giving it to -- for performance? And they clammed up, and gave it to him. So, it was quite a big award, promotion, money, trip to, I think it was, you know, the Caribbean, or something like that. So, at that point, (laugh) I decided this was probably not the company for me, and I ended up changing jobs.

NNAMDIThank you very much for sharing your story with us, Michelle. There were a lot of heads around this table nodding, (laugh) even as you spoke. Doris, tell us about the Melanin Collective. What prompted you to create it?

QUINTANILLAYeah, it's working in nonprofit. So, one thing I think was really interesting that Dana said is that men work longer hours. But I kind of thought, have you ever been in a nonprofit workplace? We work a ridiculous amount of hours, as well. So, I had had three toxic workplaces in a row, one with an injury, and I was really feeling like there was this kind of fallacy of the nonprofit sector is here to save the world, and we're here to make a difference. The women of color are attracted to those spaces, even though it's not true. They're not -- most organizations are not living their values.

QUINTANILLAAnd in these conversations with people in sharing their stories, we realize that it's a bigger issue. And so we kind of stood up for ourselves at our organization. It was a woman's sexual reproductive health organization. There are plenty here in DC. And we kind of said, this is not okay. The CEO is abusing us, and he's holding kind of probation as a way to hold you down, and also kind of holding your promotions against you, right. Do you want this? Then you should do this. And it was just very uncomfortable. So, we kind of united, and we wrote a letter to the board. We had him removed after 22 years of working in that organization.

QUINTANILLAAnd we kind of looked -- my cofounder and I, Kaitlyn Borysiewicz, who's amazing, and we kind of said, we have to do this at every organization. If we can create change here, that just -- it seemed like the worst place, then we can do it anywhere else. And that's what we've been doing. We're helping women, kind of educating, empowering and really creating transformational change in our lives by getting paid, by getting respect, by being able to move up. And then, with organizations, we are consulting, making sure that they're able to recruit, retain and promote women of color at all levels of the organization, not just worker bees.

NNAMDIWho's attending your gatherings? What kind of workplace experiences related to the pay gap do you hear from them?

QUINTANILLAOh, everything. Kind of what Michelle was saying, as you find out someone's getting paid more than you. You're supervising them and accidentally see their check, and you're like, wait, what? I'm your supervisor. I'm getting paid less. Or just, I was overlooked for a promotion. I personally had two white women who had been there less time than me with less responsibilities get promoted twice above me. And then just those are the kinds of stories I hear from women who are really young, I would say a year into their jobs, and then up to, like, 45, saying, now I can see it's not just me. It's not about working hard and giving it your all and staying up all night and sacrificing your health and your wellbeing. It's about the bias that lives in these organizations. And that's kind of a blind spot for a lot of people, even when they're well-intentioned. Even in tech, it happens.

NNAMDIHere's Matt in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Matt, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

MATTHi. I just wanted to ask the guest what her opinions were. I worked in the service industry for over ten years. And while I agree with what most things that your guests are saying, within the service industry, it doesn't seem to be really a pay -- the pay disparity seems to be reversed, or the wage gap, meaning that women get paid more in the tip service industry than men, from my experience. And I just wanted to hear your guests' comments on that.

NNAMDILiz Cox.

COXSure. Well, one thing about the service industry is it is very hard to compare Fuji apples to Fuji apples, as Kim said. The type of restaurant you're working in matters a lot. It's notorious -- you know, fine-dining restaurants are notorious for excluding women, people of color, especially women of color, you know. And those are the restaurants where you are walking with $800 in tips after a Sunday shift. You're not getting that same type of tip working at, you know, a more casual spot. So, that makes comparing the data really hard.

COXIt also depends on what type of job you have. Are you a server? Are you a bartender? It also depends on how many shifts are you working, right? Yes, maybe a woman walks with more money, maybe she's working six shifts a week. You know, that should really matter. You only have one day off, at that point. Well, if your male counterpart is walking with less money, but he's working four shifts a week, you have to compare Fuji apples to Fuji apples. And that's where the service industry data gets really difficult, and that's where I think it gets overlooked a lot.

NNAMDIGot to take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue this conversation. It's Equal Pay Day. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back. It's Equal Pay Day, and we're talking with Kim Churches, chief executive of the American Association of University Women. Doris Quintanilla is the cofounder and executive director of the Melanin Collective. And Liz Cox is the Taproom manager at Red Bear Brewing. We've heard from listeners who filled out our equal pay day survey, that there's a hyper-competitiveness in DC's work culture that makes people willing to work long hours for not much pay. Doris, does that coincide with your experience?

QUINTANILLAOh, definitely. It's very cutthroat. It's something that is attributed to being A-types move to DC and do this work. Also, people are very self-righteous. We're here to save the world, and this is where you do it. So, it's there.

NNAMDIKim, we also heard in our survey that respondents thought that pay in their field was lower because the work itself was coded female. To what extent are fields that are female-dominated also less well paid?

CHURCHESOh, absolutely. We still have -- you know, we kind of work still off of this old paradigms from black-and-white television shows, you know, where men were the main providers and women stood at the front door welcoming their man home and their two children and their golden retriever. And it's a different society today, yet our expectations of gendered roles of what roles we take on are different.

CHURCHESSo, women -- girls, even when they're in middle school -- can start getting steered into certain professions and lines based on gendered expectations of what women do versus what men do. And yet, sadly, things like childcare providers, right, are paid at a much lower rate. But I think it's really important to keep talking about this. This isn’t just about women's rights. This is about economic security for families. That is the bottom line, here. We are looking at more and more women in the workplace today.

CHURCHESWe have to move into Technicolor, get out of those black and white photos and start to change the paradigms and what our expectations are for boys and girls as they're growing and exploring different career options. At the end of the day, if we cut this and close this pay gap for good, we'd lift two-and-a-half million children out of poverty. So, this isn't just a women's rights issue. This is just about economic security.

NNAMDIWe asked our listeners what they think about the pay gap, and here are some things we heard. Maryann wrote: I think millennials and other young people just entering the workforce are much more transparent about their salaries. Katy wrote: gender pay gaps don't just impact women. They impact families. In DC, the cost of living is high, and most families have two educated working adults. So, it's really a problem for any family. Here now is Amanda in Falls Church, Virginia. Amanda, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

AMANDAHi. Thank you for taking my call. I switched from a predominantly, when I joined it, male profession, journalism. When I first started, it was -- I was lucky to have female editors. But the top of the masthead was always male, and most of the newsroom was male. To a predominantly female one, which is massage therapy. And I also switched from a salaried workplace to one where I'm an independent contractor. So, I know exactly how much I make an hour. I know exactly how much the client pays for that service and what cut I get from it.

AMANDA(unintelligible) I mean, even though I've been doing massage for eight years, and I still (word?), I'm just now making as much as I made when I was a reporter. However, I'm paid better. I don't know if that -- I don't know how that makes sense. I mean, I work less, that's a big thing. And I'm never trying to prove that I am worth the job by staying there until like 9:00 at night, because I feel this responsibility to get the newspaper out or come up with an idea or something. I know what I'm doing, because I'm doing it per hour or for 90 minutes...

NNAMDI(overlapping) I'm glad you mentioned...

AMANDA...I know how much that's worth.

NNAMDI...knowing what your worth is and what you're doing. Because, Kim, in addition to your policy research, the American Association of University of Women also runs workshops to help people navigate discussions about pay in the workplace. What advice do you have for someone entering into a profession like Amanda, who's looking to negotiate how much I'm going to make as a massage therapist that I couldn't make as a journalist?

CHURCHESRight. Well, even remember what Doris said before, about 41,000 and just not negotiating. Typically, again, those societal expectations, we don't encourage girls to negotiate. I didn't take any class in high school or college on negotiating. My first job I got offered I just said, golly, thank you. And then, sadly, too often, that's what women do. Men are four times more likely to negotiate than women. I can't overstate that enough. And so we have to train women how to negotiate their own financial futures. Is that alone going to close the pay gap? Absolutely not, but coupled with stronger pay equity laws and work with employers on improving their practices, we think we can narrow that gap.

CHURCHESAAUW, we're very proud to offer a free, it's both online at AAUW.org online salary negotiation course that's proven for hourly workers or salaried. And right here in the District of Columbia, we partner with Mayor Bowser in offering free, in-person workshops throughout the city. We'd love to have a lot of your listeners participate and start earning what they're worth.

NNAMDILiz, in your role as a manager, you're sometimes on the other side of the negotiating table.

COXAbsolutely.

NNAMDIWhat tends to be effective when employees make their case to you, and do you find, anecdotally, differences in who negotiates and who does not?

COXAbsolutely. My male employees are far more likely to negotiate. At Red Bear, I actually happen to have an almost entirely female bartending team, which is not very common. But when new employees come to negotiate, I always appreciate when women come to negotiate, even if I turn them down. I still tell them, absolutely, that was fantastic you negotiated, because we should always be negotiating. The way you get better at it is also with practice, and that's what I tell them. Even if you don't think -- even if somebody gave you as much money as you thought you were worth, still negotiate. What's the worst that happens? They say no? You got better at it.

COXThe same reason you should always go to a job interview. You get better with practice, right. And that's the thing, I don't always say yes, but you should always negotiate. It's professionalism, right. I'm not mad that you tried to negotiate. I think it's great.

NNAMDIKim, Doris mentioned that when there was that silence on the other end of the line, she didn't understand, at that time, that she was supposed to negotiate. You did not negotiate your first salary out of college, either, but when did you actually start negotiating for higher pay? Was there a learning curve?

CHURCHESThere was, indeed. And one, it was just kind of understanding where you are in the workplace and what your role is. In those entry level, I think it's you're just so grateful to have that first job, we just say thank you, and we don't go about it. But there's so much more than just salary you can negotiate for. You can negotiate for leave. You can negotiate for a flexible schedule, for, you know, cell phone reimbursement, car reimbursement, what have you. There's so many other added things to our working lives of how we can negotiate. And this is a lifelong skill. We have to negotiate to buy a car, for goodness sake. We should be negotiating for our own financial futures, as well.

NNAMDIWell, we don't have a great deal of time left, but there is some disagreement over to what extent the pay gap is the result of women's choices, choosing careers that are not as well paid, or taking a step back from the workforce, as we heard someone refer to on the phone, to raise families. How would you respond?

CHURCHESSo, one is we are an advanced nation that don't take -- we just simply are not taking the education, care and feeding of our children as seriously and really monetizing that in a meaningful way. So, one is we are truly advocating at AAUW for stronger paid parental leave policies. Right now, you know, the House of Representatives just passed overwhelmingly the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would update the more than five-decade-old Equal Pay Act from, again, a different era, 1963. The workplace looked a little different than it looks like in 2019. But we have to improve those practices.

CHURCHESAnd by parental with a capital P, not an M. We have to be very clear that this is parental leave, not maternal leave. And so that we are encouraging with those, as your caller said earlier, you know, two workers in a household working full time and educated to survive working in this very expensive metropolitan area, we have to have stronger parental leave policies, to make sure that families can thrive.

NNAMDIAnd Doris, we only have about 30 seconds left, but a lot of our callers and emailers raise the issues of color and race. So, why is it important to give women of color a space to talk about all of this, because it's an issue that can take a real emotional toll.

QUINTANILLAYes, because negotiating is one thing, but also if there's bias and blind spots and all that, that plays into it. Nobody talks about it so you've taken the classes and you're like, why isn't this working? So, coming together and having that conversation is really important. The more we talk about it, the more we can change it.

NNAMDIDoris Quintanilla is the cofounder and executive director of the Melanin Collective. Thank you for joining us.

QUINTANILLAThank you for having me.

NNAMDIKim Churches is the chief executive officer of the American Association of University Women. Thank you for joining us.

CHURCHESIt's been a pleasure.

NNAMDIAnd Liz Cox is the Taproom manager at Red Bear Brewing. Thank you for joining us.

COXThank you for having me.

NNAMDIToday's conversation on the wage gap was produced by Margaret Barthel. Our interview with Paul Wiedefeld was produced by Ruth Tam. Coming up tomorrow, after a list that rated their appearance was passed among their classmates, a group of female students at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School pushed back. We'll hear about their response and about toxic high school culture today. Plus, we'll take a look at singer Marvin Gaye's local legacy and hear music from his new album, released posthumously. That all starts tomorrow at noon. Until then, thank you for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.