Overall gap for AANHPI women is 80 cents, with Bangladeshi women making as little as 49 cents for every dollar a white man makes

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 2, 2024 – Ahead of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Equal Pay Day, a day to highlight the wage inequities faced by the AANHPI women’s community, the National Partnership for Women & Families (NPWF) released new data on wage gaps for Asian American women. Overall, AANHPI women – those working full-time and part-time – are paid just 80 cents for every dollar a white man makes. Digging deeper into the data shows that several subgroups have even wider wage gaps – making them some of the lowest paid women in the workforce:

For instance:

• Bangladeshi women have the largest gap at 49 cents for every white man’s dollar;
• Nepali women and Burmese women are paid just 51 and 52 cents, respectively;
• Pakistani women are paid just 55 cents on the dollar.

Among the largest ethnic groups of AANHPI women in the U.S:

• Chinese women are paid 86 cents;
• Filipina women are paid 80 cents;
• Vietnamese women are paid 59 cents;
• and, Korean women are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.

“For this year’s AANHPI Equal Pay Day, we want to dig beneath the over-simplistic and misleading narrative that suggests that Asian American women do not face a pay gap, or that they are uniformly better off than other women when it comes to the pay gap,” said Jocelyn C. Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. “The category AANHPI represents a broad and diverse group of women who have different immigration experiences and unique traditions and cultures. The bottom line is that Asian American women are still not paid what white men doing the same work are. Racism, sexism and harassment in the workplace are among the culprits, and the impact on AANHPI women and their families is bigger than many people perceive.”

NPWF’s latest research also found that 27 percent of Asian Americans live in multigenerational households, compared to just 19 percent of U.S. households overall. In addition, many Asian American and Pacific Islander mothers – 43 percent – bring home 40 percent or more of their families’ income, and the poverty rate for female-headed households is high among AANHPI households. AANHPI women experience workplace harassment and discrimination at high rates – almost three-quarters of AANHPI women, or 71 percent, reported feeling stressed and/or anxious due to fear of gender and/or race-based discrimination, harassment, or violence, with more than 1 in 20 (6 percent) feeling scared to return to work.

“Enhancing pay data collection and transparency efforts are critical tools for uncovering pay disparities and finally closing the gender and racial wage gap,” said Sharita Gruberg, Vice President for Economic Justice at the National Partnership for Women and Families. The National Partnership has been leading the fight – bringing together Congress, the White House, and business leaders, to pass legislation to close the wage gap. Measures such as the Paycheck Fairness Act, the FAMILY Act and the EMPOWER Act can help close the wage gap and build an economy that works for everyone.”

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