LGBTQ+ women make 79 cents on the dollar, report finds

Brooke Migdon
·4 min read

Story at a glance

  • LGBTQ+ women make about 79 cents for every dollar earned by a man, new research from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation has found.

  • Bisexual women are among the lowest earners, according to the HRC Foundation, making just $750 a week, or 68 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

  • Lesbian women were among the highest earners, but still made just 87 cents for every dollar made by a man.

LGBTQ+ women in America are consistently out-earned by men, new research has found, making less than 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

According to a report published Wednesday by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation, the educational arm of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, LGBTQ+ women working full-time in the U.S. earn a median weekly wage of $875. That compares to a median of $1,108 for men, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Put another way, LGBTQ+ women working full-time in the U.S. earn roughly 79 cents for every dollar made by a man – another 55 working days would be needed to make up the difference.

Wednesday’s data shows the wage gap between men and LGBTQ+ women may be widening. In January, the HRC Foundation estimated that LGBTQ+ women made 87 cents on the dollar, while LGBTQ+ workers overall earned roughly 90 cents for every dollar earned by the average full-time worker in the U.S.

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As in January, the HRC Foundation on Wednesday found pay disparities are particularly pronounced among LGBTQ+ women of color. Latina LGBTQ+ women working full-time currently earn about 65 cents for every dollar made by a man, according to the report, and Black LGBTQ+ women earn 77 cents.

White LGBTQ+ women earn about 87 cents on the dollar, while Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) women earn 90 cents.

When LGBTQ+ women were grouped by their specific sexual identity, the HRC Foundation report found that bisexual women are among the lowest earners, making just $750 a week, or 68 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

Prior research conducted by the Williams Institute and the Center for American Progress has found that bisexual women in America are more likely to be living in poverty and face heightened economic insecurity.

Queer, pansexual, demisexual and omnisexual women, when analyzed together, fared a bit better, but still earn only 80 cents for every dollar made by a man. Gay women are among the highest earners, according to the report, making about $962 a week – equivalent to that of white LGBTQ+ women and higher than LGBTQ+ women overall.

But gay women still face a wage gap, earning roughly 87 cents for every dollar made by the average American male. That changes when gay women are grouped by their race and ethnicity, however, and while gay Latina women make about 65 cents for every dollar earned by a man, gay AANHPI women actually out-earn men, making an estimated $1.08 for each dollar they earn.

In general, AANHPI women in the U.S. typically make more than men on average, according to the BLS.

According to the HRC Foundation report, racial and ethnic wage disparities were “magnified” among bisexual women, specifically.

While white bisexual women earned a median weekly wage of $831, translating into a wage gap of 75 cents for every dollar earned by a man, Black bisexual women earned just 63 cents and AANHPI bisexual women made just 60 cents.

Latina bisexual women earned just 50 cents for every dollar made by a working man. In 2021, Latina bisexual women would have had to work until June 24, 2022 – halfway through the year – to earn what a man earned.

“As the number of openly LGBTQ+ people in our country grows, the fight for equal pay has not yet been won,” Shoshana Goldberg, director of public education and research at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, said Wednesday

“Earning less is a dangerous setback that impacts every facet of our lives,” Goldberg said, “and must be addressed to promote true equity in not only our finances but in society at large.”

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