Disabled Women’s Equal Pay Day

date: September 18, 2024

  • 50 cents for “all earners” for full-time year-round + part-time and part-year

  • 67 cents for full-time, year-round earners


This September 18, Equal Pay Today will be supporting our friends at the National Partnership for Women & Families, AAPD, Disability Culture Lab, CLASP, NDI, Autistic Self Advocacy Network, CAP Disability Justice Initiative, Women Enabled International, Center for Racial and Disability Justice, and the National Women’s Law Center, who have come together to organize the first-ever Disabled Women’s Equal Pay Day.  To mark the day, there will be a Disabled Women’s Equal Pay Day social media storm on September 18 at 2pm ET/11am PT. This social media storm will help raise awareness about the pay gaps experienced by disabled women and some necessary policy reforms to address one of the largest wage gaps experienced by women workers. Our shared hashtags for the day will be #DisabledWomensEqualPayDay and #DisabledWomensEPD.

For every dollar earned by all nondisabled men, disabled women earners (full-time, part-time, and part-year), bring home a mere 50 cents due to a long history of ableism, institutionalization, and workplace discrimination. While disabled workers are especially likely to work part time,  even when looking at disabled women working full time and year round, they  are still only paid 67 cents for every dollar paid to a nondisabled man working full time, year round.  Like all gender pay gaps, the wage gaps for disabled women of color are even wider due to the intersectional and compounding nature of sexism, racism, and ableism.

Policy reforms are necessary to remove ableist barriers that trap disabled women in poverty  and transform systems that perpetuate the egregious wage gap for disabled women. And we know addressing the wage gap for disabled is just the beginning. 

This year, for our Disabled Women’s Equal Pay Day social media storm, we will be focusing on three primary calls to action:

  1. Ending segregated workplaces and subminimum wages for disabled women. It’s time for competitive integrated employment. Tell Congress: Pass Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act (TCIEA).

  2. Ending forced poverty: Eliminate draconian public benefit eligibility requirements that keep disabled women from working while getting the support we need to survive. Tell Congress: Pass the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act.

  3. Expanding funding for disabled women – who both give and receive care – to live and work in our communities instead of trapped in institutions. Tell Congress: Pass the HCBS Access Act.

Equal pay isn’t just a slogan—it’s a fight for justice. Listen to Noreen Farrell and Sylvia Torres-Guillien (Executive Director & Director of Litigation, Disability Rights Legal Center) discuss the harsh realities of pay inequality for disabled women and the actions we can take.