Have you had a firsthand pay gap experience? Speak up. Here are a few women who were brave enough to share their personal stories in the hopes that their voices will be heard, and that a change will be made.
Read all of their stories at AAUW and 9to5.
Read all of their stories at AAUW and 9to5.
"Cheryl Hughes was a divorced mother of two when she began to pursue an engineering degree in 1982. She dealt with an overwhelming male majority in the field and found a balance between motherhood and being a student, but she couldn’t overcome pay inequity. Hughes said she lost more than $1 million in earnings throughout her career as an engineer because she is an African American woman."
"Ellie Setser and her female colleagues in a research lab at a teaching hospital fought pay discrimination in the late 1970s. The technicians in Setser’s lab were all women with college degrees. They learned that a male head technician without a degree — working in a much smaller lab with less responsibility — earned a salary 1.5 times larger than the female head technician in Setser’s lab. The women banded together and called in anonymous complaints to a U.S. Department of Justice pay discrimination hotline. To their surprise, an investigation — and pay raises — followed."
"Reshma Daniel’s parents moved to America from India with just $20. Her parents wanted their children to live the American dream. For Daniel, that means law school. While at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, she majored in legal studies and job shadowed a family lawyer. Following a pretrial hearing, another lawyer, a Vietnamese woman, told Daniel that she should not become a lawyer. “She was like, ‘You won’t get paid. As a woman and of color, you’re going to be underpaid, so there’s really no point,’” Daniel recalled."