SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — Kimberly Lim, who's Chinese American, launched a fragrance business in 2021 called Sun Kissed & Co. It's based in Sacramento. Lim offers lightly scented candles, oils, body butter and other products to help people with fragrance sensitivity.
"I wanted to make a difference in my community," said Lim. "My fragrance brand is inspired by my family. We are fragrance sensitive. We had trouble finding quality products that were not overly scented."
Outside of serving her community, Lim says she went into business for herself because of the persistent gender and racial pay gap seen in a typical nine-to-five.
"Knowing that there's such a huge difference within pay grade between females and males, people of color and minority groups, it's just so upsetting," said Lim.
On average, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) women earn only 80 cents for every dollar earned by White men in the U.S, according to data from the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF).
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The organization goes on to explain that many women experience much larger wage gaps, particularly Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander women. For example, Burmese women earn only 50 cents for every dollar.
“Our wages touch every aspect of our lives," said Sung Yeon Choimorrow, NAPAWF’s executive director. "It impacts our ability to access health care and make decisions about if, when, and how we start and support a family."
April 5 marks AANHPI Equal Pay Day. That's when the earnings of AANHPI women "catch up" to what white men made the previous year.
NAPAWF is working to raise awareness of how the wage gap affects AANHPI women and girls through a social media campaign. That includes using the hashtags: #AANHPIEqualPay, #AANHPIEqualPayDay, #NotYourModelMinority, #DisaggregateData.
"When we examine wages using disaggregated data, we find that it upends the dangerous ‘model minority myth’ and the false idea that all Asian Americans are high-achieving immigrants and from financially prosperous communities,” said Choimorrow.
The Sacramento Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce, agrees. That's why the organization is working to raise awareness about the importance of equal pay for AANHPI women, too. The groups says AANHPI communities are diverse and everyone needs support.
"Equal pay does not stop at salaries for our communities, " said Andrea Cao, senior public policy manager with the Sacramento Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce. "But it includes funding for women of color led businesses and nonprofit organizations."
To learn more about the gender and racial pay gap, visit the NAPAWF website.
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