#RealPay and Inclusive Feminism

This piece includes contributions from Winter/Spring 2014 Communications Intern Casey Farrington

“#RealPay and Inclusive Feminism” is the last in our #RealPay series. Our intent was to highlight the ways racial discrimination intersects with gender discrimination, creating an even wider pay gap for women of color. We also covered the ways in which “LGBT-identified individuals are much more economically vulnerable than their straight counterparts.”

As Casey Farrington wrote in the first part of this series:

At the intersection of race and gender, we can see that the wage gap isn’t about choice.

NOW’s #RealPay campaign was meant to draw attention to how race affects the gender pay gap, but it was also meant to highlight what “mainstream” feminist discourse has been struggling with for decades: inclusion.

As we acknowledge the extra work Hispanic/Latina women must do in order to earn as much as the average white man in 2013 (today is Equal Pay Day for Hispanic/Latina women), we must also acknowledge how often women of color are left out. Women of color have always been heavily involved in the fight for women’s rights, but their hard work is too-often treated as tangential. We hope that #RealPay can serve as a reminder that feminists should fight for every woman, no matter her skin color, no matter her sexuality, no matter the sex she was assigned at birth.

June 17 marks the end of the #RealPay series, but not the end of the conversation. NOW hopes to continue this conversation – and highlight the intersecting forms of oppression women of color face – at our conference this month. Faces of Feminism: Strength in Diversity is an opportunity for us to do just that. Our workshops include panels on: transgender rights, coalition-building, allyship in social justice work, organizing through social media, and much, much more. You can also find a full list of our speakers here.

#RealPay is just a small part of a picture we continue to develop.

NOTE: We hope you’ll join us at noon on June 17th, as we chat with Fem2pt0 on social media, feminism, and intersectionality. Follow the conversation on Twitter by using #DigiFem2

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