Through innovation, curiosity, and belonging as our guide along with being data focused, we sought out an opportunity to provide a niche program for students during our premier engagement time in the Life Design Lab – Future Fest.
Through our outcomes data, we learned there is a major discrepancy between FLI and URM Women’s salary attainment. The mean for our URM Female FLI students was $60,542 & the median of $54,000 (78 responses / 101 graduates) where Non-FLI, Non-URM and Male salary was Mean $102,215 & $90,000 Median (1635 responses /2953 graduates). This shows a $41,673 / $36,000 difference in Mean/Median. This is very unfortunate.
With this, we went ahead and began to explore how we might make a change in this data for the better for women who are URM and/or FLI.
Knowing that we have Future Fest in September and Latinx / Hispanic Heritage month is from September 15-October 15, we decided we should focus our programming efforts on Latinx / Hispanic women.
We began our ideation with what might be the reasons for lower salary – which can include job choice, feelings of gratefulness to have a job offer, not knowing that negotiating is an expectation, and more. Our thought was that maybe advocacy can help with this challenge.
AAUW has done so much work and research on pay inequity for women of color including Latinas and the Pay Gap. Leanin.org also adds that:
“The pay gap is the top of the iceberg. Latinas face a double-edged sword of sexism and racism in the workplace: As women, Latinas are stereotyped as less competent than men, and as Latinx Americans, Latinas are stereotyped as less intelligent than white people.16 Researchers believe that bias is to blame for over half of the pay gap for Latinas.17”
Our goal is to help to reframe this experience and share how Latinas CAN thrive in the workforce in hopes that it provides encouragement, resources and tips on advocating for themselves to thrive in the ways they see fit.
We welcome you to take this time to view the Latinas Thriving in the Workforce experiences on our website and continue to advocate for yourself and others to be our best.
Written by Clifton E. Shambry Jr.
