By Alexis Taylor
AFRO Managing Editor
“This is a man’s world, this is a man’s world…but it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.”
In 2025, the salient lyrics of soul legend James Brown still ring true. Women contribute to everything from academia to medicine, sports, politics and more. Women have broken barriers when it comes to the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. We have smashed glass ceilings as entrepreneurs and set records on the court– all while birthing the nations, led in large part by men.
Though some Americans– women included– may be trying to dial back the clocks to a bygone era, millions more have resolved to push forward and use every tool available to them to create a humanity that is equal for all. More and more women are making their voices heard while also understanding how to wield their economic power.
According to Neilsen, “as of 2024, women control an estimated $31.8 trillion of worldwide spending and the number will continue to grow — women across the globe will control 75 percent of discretionary spending in the next five years.”
“Women are increasingly making economic decisions for their families and have 70-80 percent influence on all consumer spending,” reports the data and analytics company.
Still, a wage gap persists. The Pew Research Center reports that “in 2024, women 25 to 34 earned an average of 95 cents for every dollar earned by a man in the same age group – a 5-cent gap. By comparison, the gender pay gap among workers of all ages that year was 15 cents.”
“In 2024, women earned an average of 85 percent of what men earned, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers.”
This year, Equal Pay Day fell on March 25.
The symbolic day was created in 1996 by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE), but the organization dissolved Dec. 31, 2024. Still, the day is meant to recognize how far into the year women have to work to catch up with the pay their male counterparts earned the previous year. Aside from Equal Pay Day, which recognizes all women, there are also additional days to highlight how far into a new year Black women have to work to catch up with men’s earnings from the previous year.
As you could probably guess– it’s not in March. It’s also not in April, May, or June. According to the American Association of University Women, Black women will have to work until July 10 to catch up.
And it’s not because women don’t contribute enough to the workforce.
The labor market might be run by men in power– but women help keep industries across the country going.
According to the Center for American Progress, “As workers, women were the primary drivers of the strong labor market, and the share of women ages 25 to 54 who are employed reached a record high of 75.3 percent in 2023.”
As the price of eggs, gas, rent and more increase, being paid a fair, equal and living wage is crucial. The stressors that come from financial woes cannot be ignored.
According to the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, “financial wellness is correlated with good health, while financial stress, including a high debt-income ratio, puts physical and mental health at risk.”
Now is the time to raise our voices about the pay gap.
Let’s take time to thank the women who are leading the fight for change. That includes our mothers, grandmothers, daughters, the aunties, cousins and sister-friends striving for a better future. It includes legislators like Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), who has introduced a bill aimed at cutting the gender discrimination that occurs when a candidate is asked for previous salary information on a job application. It includes women like Mayor Alyia Gaskins, the first African-American woman to lead the City of Alexandria, and Judge Kimberly C. McBride, who was appointed to the Baltimore City Circuit Court in 2024.
This week, the AFRO salutes all the women who have made change in their own way and all of those blazing a path to the future. Many thanks to all of the women who helped put the editions together (and the men who support them too) !
