In 2013, American women made 82 cents to every dollar a man made and 80 cents to every dollar made by a white male; up from 79 cents and 77 cents, respectively, in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, white and Asian people, regardless of their gender, make more than blacks and Hispanics – regardless of their gender.

Deborah Ashton, Vice President and Chief Diversity officer at Novant Health, publishe on HBR Network Blog an interesting analysis about wage gaps, plural trying to answer to the question « Does Race or Gender Matter to your Paycheck? Her conclusion: Asian women with bachelor’s and advanced degrees are the only women who make more than one group of men–black men, who earn the least in comparison to their male counterparts at every level of education.

This chart exposes one other important myth: that companies have to pay more for talented women of color. In discussions of affirmative action cases and throughout my career, I have heard both from right-wing bloggers and middle-of-the-road human resources professionals that a premium is paid to attract and retain women and minority talent and especially, women of color. The central argument is that because there are assumed to be so few “qualified” candidates who are both female and nonwhite – and because companies can count women of color towards multiple diversity targets — competition for those candidates means they end up with significantly higher salaries. Setting aside the question of whether there is, in fact, a shortage of qualified women of color, it should by now be obvious that those women aren’t getting paid a premium. In fact, black and Hispanic women vie for last place on the earnings pyramid at every level of education, and the gender pay gap actuallyincreases with higher education for black, white, and Hispanic women.  Routinely, when pay equity analyses are done for corporations, the employees whose actual salaries are greater than two standard deviations higher than their predicted salary (based on job-related variables such as market value, time served, and performance ratings) are white men.

Read the full article written by Deborah Ashton « Does Race or Gender Matter to your Paycheck? »