This is a guest post by Serena Fong in honor of Asian American Equal Pay Day on March 15, 2016. 

I joke that my lack of math skills is one way I fight stereotypes about Asian Americans, but seeing how much Asian American women lose in earnings every year because of the gender wage gap is no laughing matter. The good news is that unequal wages usually don’t happen intentionally; systemic and unconscious biases lead to gender gaps in opportunities, leadership, and wages. The bad news is that this means there isn’t a quick fix or magic bullet. But there are steps and practices workplaces can adopt. These include:

• Conducting pay equity studies.
• Implementing “no negotiations” and paying for work—not potential.
• Adopting pay transparency policies.
• Continually evaluating recruitment, promotion, and talent development systems for gender bias.

Hopefully by taking action to close the gender wage gap for Asian American women—as well as ALL women—we can move from a day of awareness that wage gaps exist to a celebration that they’re closed.

Serena Fong is Vice President, Government Affairs at Catalyst. Serena Fong provides advice and recommendations about the development of Catalyst’s public positions on various social/government policies and advocacy strategies to support the advancement of Catalyst’s mission, vision, and business objectives. As Vice President, Government Affairs, Ms. Fong monitors government actions and policies on current business issues and helps develop an organizational response to economic, political, and other current events/trends affecting women in business.

Prior to working at Catalyst, Ms. Fong was a television news producer, working for a number of broadcast news programs airing on national news networks such as ABC, Fox News, and MSNBC. She graduated cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism from Syracuse University.