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While we set aside one month of every year to commemorate women’s history, the realities of gender inequities remain with us daily, with women working in this country today for just a little more than 80 cents for every dollar earned by men.
This year, United States’ Equal Pay Day, the day when the earnings of the average woman beginning in January 2021 caught up to what the average man had earned by Dec. 31, 2021 fell on March 15. That’s progress — last year women had to work until March 24 – 83 days more than men to get what men got paid for a years’ work — but it hasn’t been shared equally. Black women have to work until Sept. 29, Indigenous American women until Dec. 1, and Latina women until Dec. 8 – almost an additional year, to earn what the average man in America earned in 2021. The COVID pandemic has worsened some gender pay disparities, taking a toll on both pay and hours for traditionally female jobs, including teaching and nursing and sidelining mothers disproportionately.
This Women’s History Month, Palm Beach Post writer Valentina Palm gathered stories from women working in Palm Beach County on the value of their work, and how their work is valued.
Women’s History Month
“Seeing over 40 girls go to college for free on athletic scholarships is probably my greatest joy,” Cassandra Rahming, Palm Beach Lakes High School basketball coach
“Why does a childcare worker get paid so much less money than a plumber?” U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL)
“I stay with them, walking and talking, convincing them to take their medication,” Claire Dameus, Certified Nursing Assistant, home caregiver
“Our contacts, our experiences, our exposures, all played a role in that disparity and how an employer . . . looks at us,” Salesia Smith-Gordon, attorney
“My biggest fear is that the most vulnerable part of our population will not have equal access to reproductive justice and reproductive freedom,” Mona Reis, Presidential Women’s Center
“I don’t think I’ve been affected by the wage gap or moving forward. But based on statistics, I feel I might be,” Noreydy Ortega Cantoran, MBA, human resources management.
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Cassandra Rahming, basketball coach, Palm Beach Lakes High School
Coach Cassandra Rahming has coached girls’ basketball at Palm Beach Lakes High School for 24 years. In February, she became the county’s first female and first African American coach to win 500 games.
I started playing basketball around the age of 5. My own godfather, Robert Miller, put a ball in my hands, and I was the only girl around that played with the community. It was just fun and then I became good at it. I worked at Boca Raton High School for four years. And then when my high school coach was ready to hand it off to me, he said, “I need you to come home.” And that’s how I ended up at Palm Beach Lakes in 1999, and I’ve been there since.
More:Palm Beach Lakes coach Cassandra Rahming makes history with 500th career win
More:Palm Beach County high school girls basketball preview: What to watch for in 2021-22
I had so many people that helped me along my journey and I wanted to pay it forward. I just want to help kids get into school, get a free education, and most of them needed something to push them through besides academics. Seeing over 40 girls go to college for free on athletic scholarships is probably my greatest joy because getting a full ride to college is hard. I have, you know, so many young ladies that didn’t choose basketball as their path but, they became doctors or lawyers, police officers, joined the service.
It’s important so the younger generation can see that we can hold higher positions, and we should receive equal pay, just like everybody else, no matter your gender. Coaches, we all get paid the same. It’s based on your years in the school district and coaching is a supplement. It doesn’t affect whether you’re winning or losing, male or female — it’s all the same thing. It’s just the right thing to do. It shouldn’t matter based on your gender what you’re paid as long as you’re getting the job done.
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U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL)
Rep. Frankel represents Florida’s 21st congressional district.
My childhood was in the ’50s and everything was either pink or blue. I loved sports and I remember my little brother had sports leagues and I remember sitting on the sidelines crying because I wasn’t allowed to play. As you moved through college in those days, there weren’t sports scholarships for women and there were limitations as to how many women could get into law school and medical school.
There cannot be anyone my age that didn’t feel, at some point in their life, that they were being held back because of their sex. I’m not complaining about my life in any way. I had a lot of opportunities that allowed me to advance; but girls my age, we had a lot of challenges young men didn’t have.
I came to Palm Beach in the ’70s and worked in the Public Defender’s office, and he and the staff gave me every opportunity to thrive in my job. With the cases I had, I never felt any kind of difference — but in the pay, yes. In most jobs you don’t get to know what the other people’s pay are. But I did find out the men who had families were getting paid more than me, significantly more. The attitude was based on “He has to take care of his wife and kids,” that kind of thing, and that was legal.
I grew up at a time where we didn’t have the Equal Pay Act; we didn’t have Title IX; abortion was illegal; the Fair Pay Act wasn’t even a concept. Married women couldn’t get credit; they couldn’t buy a house — the husband had to sign the paper. I raise all that because I want people to know that all these rights that women gained over the years are absolutely under threat today. This is one reason why we need the Equal Rights Amendment.
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The real reason for the pay gap is not necessarily that women are doing the same exact work as men and getting paid less. The real reason is the kinds of jobs women are doing — which are very, very important — pay less, for example: social workers, teachers, government workers.
Why does a childcare worker get paid so much less money than a plumber? Something else that is very telling is that when more women get into a profession, the median salary goes down.
Women by the time they reach retirement age collect thousands of dollars less in their lifetime and have less savings because they’ve had lower salaries and Social Security, which is based on earning that is going to be much lower. So, you have older women in poverty and many more women that have to access Medicaid, more women who have to rely on food stamps or subsidized housing, and everybody pays for that.
What we have seen now with COVID, a lot of childcare centers have shut down so people couldn’t go to work if they had a young child. As we are getting back to normal there is a shortage of childcare workers. Why? Because they are now in other jobs that pay a better wage. That means somebody, a man or a woman that works to make a living, doesn’t have a place to leave their child safely and affordably.
Women are traditionally caregivers in their families. And now, we are talking about sandwich generations that you’re not only taking care of a little child but could also be taking care of an older parent or grandfather with home health that is also very expensive. If we don’t fight to get these costs down, to take down the burden of women — I don’t use the burden to put it in a bad way — we want to take care of our child and our parents, but we also want or have to go to work.
Right now, I don’t think that people who love and take care of our children and our disabled, sick and elderly are paid fairly. I hope there are still people fighting for that cause; that gives me hope.
Claire Rose Dameus, certified nursing assistant
Claire Rose Dameus is a certified nursing assistant, home caregiver, and mother of three daughters who have graduated from college and are now themselves working women.
I was born in Haiti and I was 24 years old when I got to Palm Beach County.
When I came in here, the change I made was to go to school to become a certified nursing assistant. That was in 1995, a long time ago. Back then the pay was $6.15 and ever since, to pay my living I’ve had to keep three jobs to raise my three girls.
I work in two nursing homes and one private client. When I do my job I talk to my kids and say, “Listen, I do my three jobs to take care of you guys because without the jobs, when you ask me for something, I am not going to have the money.” I am a single parent; I raised my kids by myself. Because my life is paycheck to paycheck, if I don’t work, I can’t pay our bills.
When I got my first job I got paid $9 an hour and some men that came behind me got paid at least $10. I don’t know why. Maybe they think men are more powerful than women.
I love my job so when I come I treat everybody the same because when I see my patients I am just thinking about my parents, my mom and my dad. I don’t only help them shower, I stay with them, walking and talking, convincing them to take their medication. All of myself, that is what I give.
More:Lake Worth Beach nursing home workers protest for higher wages
I got by with COVID and I had never asked for a raise because I know they’re not gonna give it to me. Now I get paid $15.46. This is the minimum. Now, the price of everything is high. The prices of cars, food in supermarkets and houses are high. You can’t buy anything right now.
And we get paid $15 — that is nothing for us. And white people come in and they see me work. They aren’t going to do the job. Still, they don’t want to pay.
For my future, I’m just going to stay there until I retire. This is my life. This is my job. I like my job, and I do it well even though they don’t pay me enough but I still love it.
But, I am hopeful for my daughters. Back in 2016, I volunteered and canvassed for Hillary Clinton because if the woman is president, maybe something can change for women to be paid equally as men. For their future, I hope that everyone comes together so everyone can get paid the same.
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Salesia Smith-Gordon, founder, owner of Smith-Gordon Law West Palm Beach and Belle Glade.
Salesia Smith-Gordon is an attorney who has owned her law firm in West Palm Beach for 24 years, and serves as a trustee for the Chamber of Commerce of Palm Beach.
When I became a lawyer, I opened up my law firm immediately. I have never worked for someone as a lawyer. Honestly, I probably would not know if I experienced the wage gap early in my career. But, as a business owner, what I have seen is how my counterparts who are men seem to have a lot more accessibility to funding than do I. I am a trustee for the Chamber of Commerce Palm Beach, where we discuss economic disparities and I am in a position where I am listening, learning and hearing, and that’s where I see it a lot. I can compare what one person makes vs. another person doing almost the same job and there is a huge disparity here. As a trial lawyer, I have to present wage loss and damages claims for my clients, and when they’re women, there is a doggone difference.
We, women and especially black women, are still dealing with the same issue over and over again. Our contacts, our experiences, our exposures, all played a role in that disparity and how an employer, who’s usually a white man, who is the hiring person looks at us. Men tend to transcend all of those things and their wages are still higher. I think it’s because people tend to give more credence to those who look like them, sound like they relate better to them.
More:Lawyer and pharmacist Smith-Gordon named to Palm Beach County ethics panel
My biggest fear as it relates to the income disparity as a black woman, we already have a wage gap but this wage gap is generational, it is not singular. It doesn’t just affect this one woman, it affects the family existing and affects the future families of that household, and often the entire community because we as women tend to shoulder the burden of extended caretakers of our children and our parents, all the while at the same time getting paid less for doing the same job.
We are also usually the ones who are either reduced in hours and not given bonuses or are fired. This perpetuates the gender and cultural and racial wage gap because it is a perpetual cycle in which the American Dream seems not to be attainable for too many people, especially for women and black women. And God forbid, if you’re also a single parent.
My concerns also are that when do we actualize our dreams and our goal, the time and effort and work that we put into it is generally a whole lot more than our counterparts and that brings depression, it brings about struggles with health care. If you can’t get paid, and you don’t have a job, or if you have a job and do not make enough money, you can’t afford health care. It’s a cycle that’s like a cyclone cycle.
What’s the remedy? I don’t know, but giving up is not one of them.
If we fail to have the diversity of gender, the diversity of culture, the diversity of ethnicities, in Palm Beach County, then it is a huge missing link within the legal profession and justice system.
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Mona Reis, founder of Presidential Women’s Center
New York City native Mona Reis founded Presidential Women’s Center, the first abortion clinic in Palm Beach County, 41 years ago.
I have been involved with reproductive rights and women’s rights starting in the ’60s. As an activist I worked while I was in school in Washington, through an organization to help try to legalize abortion. When I graduated college, I had wanted to go to law school, but I needed a job, so I interviewed at the University of Miami School of Medicine. They were ready to open an outpatient abortion facility when Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land, so the day after Roe, I applied for a job as a counselor, spent the day there and fell in love with the field. I ultimately opened a center for somebody in Miami, where I was their director and I had to take some time off to have a second child and really, really missed the field.
I missed working with the women, missed being a part of something that I felt was so essential for the future of women in their dreams and their goals. So in 1980 I founded Presidential Women’s Center with a loan from a bank and the desire to have a facility that had a feminist perspective in the way of delivering health care, and was able to hire physicians — and 41 years later, the office is still seeing patients.
If you don’t have the ability to make a decision as to when is the right time to be a parent, and to assume the responsibility of what that means, then it doesn’t give women a fair opportunity to have the opportunities that men would have. So this is a real hardship; this is a lack of humanity in respect for women and their families. So the economics of this, whether it’s not being able to afford a child, we also don’t live in a country that values children once they’re here.
More:Planned Parenthood leader Lillian Tamayo retiring after two decades defending abortion rights
My biggest fear is that the most vulnerable part of our population will not have equal access to reproductive justice and reproductive freedom.
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Noreydy Ortega Cantoran, Lynn University enrollment office
Noreydy Ortega Cantoran was born in Mexico. Her family came to the United States when she was 8 years old.
When we got here, both of my parents worked in the fields. My parents have always promoted education, so throughout school I did my best to keep good grades because they came to this country, and I wanted to give back and be able to make them proud.
I went to Lynn University for my undergraduate and graduate degrees because they gave me a full tuition scholarship and then the Farmworker Council gave another amount for transportation and books.
My main job is at the university, and then I do a part time job as a cashier at the gas station — and in that role, all of them are women as well. I decided to take the job. I had known them before because I worked with them when I turned 18 and I did it part time when I was going through college. But I came back to save money to be able to purchase a home for my parents. For me, the second job is mainly about saving.
It’s one of the ways for me to give back and to be able to provide them stability, and to be able to have somewhere where we can call our house and not have to be paying rent or paying a mortgage for someone else.
My dad currently works in landscaping, and my mom also. She does work part-time landscaping and cleans homes. So not in the field like they were before but my dad is still outside every day.
My concern is that Latinas will continue getting paid significantly less. There have been laws like the Equal Pay Act but they haven’t seemed to be helping enough, because it’s been around for some time and there’s still this wage gap.
To get a certain job, we need certain credentials, and if we have those credentials, and are able to do the job, I think it’s crazy that we get paid less. Hopefully, we can get to the point where we’re equally compensated so that we’re able to build wealth and help the Latin community.
In my case, if I were to build wealth, I would love to give back in the form of scholarships, like I was given by the Farmworker Council and also through my studies. I went to school because of scholarships, and I would like to provide that for Latinos so that they continue going to school, prospering and helping other Latinos.
At this point, I don’t think I’ve been affected by the wage gap or moving forward. I hope I’m not. But based on statistics, I feel I might be. And that’s a bit scary to me because I am gaining the experience, I have the degrees. So, I would like to get to a point in my life or for every woman to get paid the same as men.
So, I hope that we’re able to pass more laws to reduce the gap. I know it’s going to take time, but my hope is that we will eventually get to a point where the gap is significantly reduced and women, especially Latinas, get paid as they deserve.
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