In honor of Equal Pay Day on April 4, Sheryl Sandberg's organization LeanIn.org created a video to help us understand the gender wage gap, Hello Giggles reports.
Women earned 22% less money than men last year, according to the Economic Policy Institute, even when factors like education and experience were controlled for. Factor in race, and it's even more appalling: Black women make 63% of what white men do, and Latina women make 54%, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
But these numbers alone don't capture the consequences of making less money for the same work. To make the concept more concrete, LeanIn.org's video shows women getting 20% less of everything.
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One woman's phone dies when it says it has 20% of its power left. A barista gives a white woman a cup of coffee that's 80% full, and a Black woman's cup is even emptier.
One woman wonders if she's crazy for being unsatisfied with 80% of a haircut. "You're not crazy. This is crazy," another (rightfully) tells her.
If women spent the same proportion of their salaries as men, that's sort of what the world would look like. And the troubling thing is, women are actually spending a greater proportion of their earnings due to the "pink tax" — the tendency for products geared toward women to cost more. They're also still doing a lot more unpaid labor in the form of housework and childcare.
"Women deserve their 20% today and every day," text at the end reads. And beyond that, they deserve recognition for all the work they do, both paid and unpaid.
As Sandberg said in a press release, "this issue speaks to how we value women's labor, knowledge, time, training, and so much more. In short, it's about women's worth. There's nothing more fundamental than that."