A Day Late and A Dollar Short: Pay Equity in the Repro Movement
In the first six months of 2021, we conducted a survey on race, salary, and workplace practices at reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations. Mirroring some of the questions from our 2019 survey on similar topics, we hoped to go into even more depth about differences in workplace experiences by race in particular. This report details our findings. Our sample this time around is smaller than it was in 2019, though we purposefully recruited a higher percentage of respondents of color than in our previous survey. Though our findings are not generalizable to every repro organization, we believe these data reflect important patterns in our field that are worth documenting and discussing.
https://www.reprojobs.org/salaries
Specifically, we found that:
WHITE WORKERS MAKE MORE THAN WORKERS OF COLOR. The average salary of a white repro worker is $74,737, about $6,000 more than Black workers and $7,000 more than Latinx workers. While these data were not statistically significant, they still reflect systemic inequities in our field that need to be corrected.
GENDER EXPANSIVE AND LGBTQ+ WORKERS MAKE SIGNIFICANTLY LESS THAN THEIR CISGENDER AND STRAIGHT PEERS. This result is similar to the results of our last survey, indicating that the large gaps between the salaries of workers based on gender and sexuality may be a systemic issue.
EXPERIENCES WORKING IN REPRO DIFFER SIGNIFICANTLY BASED ON RACE. This is true across many measures; we found, for example, that people of color working in repro are less likely to be promoted than their white peers and are also more likely than their white peers to believe (correctly) that there are differences in pay by race at their workplace.
MORE THAN 4 IN 10 RESPONDENTS REPORTED CONSIDERING LEAVING THEIR REPRO JOB WITHIN THE NEXT YEAR. The majority (59%) indicated that this was due to low pay, which points to a long-standing yet fixable problem: pay people more! While not a fix for everything, it could increase employee satisfaction and retention.
THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE REPRO WORKFORCE IS NOT UNIONIZED, despite major upticks in unionization across broader progressive movements over the last few years. This is a key area for growth in terms of building and expanding repro worker power.
THE VAST MAJORITY (88%) OF WORKPLACES HAVE ENGAGED IN DEI WORK, BUT LESS THAN A QUARTER OF PARTICIPANTS SAY IT HAS RESULTED IN MEASURABLE PROGRESS. The majority of respondents (76%) had participated in DEI efforts, and most were not compensated for it. We need a more robust understanding of what makes valuable and effective DEI work.