Women's forum oppose EEOC plan to end data collection per ethnic groups

The pay disparities between different Asian subgoups belie the model minority myth about the economic well-being of all Asian Americans.

That knowledge that allows nonprofit and federal agencies to focus their assistance to the groups that need help the most.

That knowledge is also in danger. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has proposed stopping the court-mandated pay data collection broken down by race and gender.

“Are AAPI women equal under the law?: asked Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum.

"Our lived experiences and the data show that we are not (equal). AAPI women must work, on average, two extra months for our pay to catch up with the annual pay of white men--and average wage gaps in several AAPI ethnic subgroups are significantly larger,” she continued in a statement.

Asian American women on average earn 85 cents for every dollar a white man earns. 

However, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander women have some of the highest wage gaps compared to other racial and ethnic groups. Nepalese women make only 51 cents to every dollar a white man earns, That number is even less for Burmese (44 cents),9 Marshallese (44 cents),10 and Bhutanese (38 cents) women.

“Let it be known that the EEOC’s proposal, if implemented, will further invisiblize AAPI women and girls. We strongly oppose this stop collection of wage gap data, and we will not silently allow ourselves to be erased from the national conversation about the wage gap," said Choimorrow.

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