SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL) and its community partners are recognizing November 30th as Native Women’s Equal Pay Day, a day that acknowledges the pay disparity between Native women and white men.

Native women are paid just 50 cents for every dollar paid to a white man. Put another way, it takes a Native woman working until November 30th into the new year to earn what her white, male counterpart earned the previous year.

“Recent amendments to the State’s Equal Pay Act have provided the Department with tools to highlight pay transparency in the private sector. Wage transparency is the path to eliminating both the gender and racial pay gaps that persist in the workplace,” said Illinois Department of Labor Acting Director Jane Flanagan.

This year IDOL is also partnering with Women Employed, Arise Chicago, Man-Tra-Con Corp., Shriver Center on Poverty Law, and YWCA of the Quad Cities to raise awareness of pay equity rights with a particular focus on low-income women of color through a multi-faceted media and outreach campaign made possible by a Fostering Access, Rights and Equity (FARE) grant from the Women’s Bureau of the United States Department of Labor.

Read more about the FARE Grant partnership here.