My Testimony While Fighting for Equal Pay for Equal Work
My name is Camille Zapata, and I am a 25-year-old Latina woman from Stockton, CA.
This week, I had hoped to announce that, effective February 1, 2021, I would be serving as Chief of Staff for Kathy Miller, San Joaquin County Supervisor for District 2, as the only woman of color to serve in the chief of staff role for the County. Unfortunately, three male supervisors decided to challenge Supervisor Miller’s hiring decision and raised questions over whether I should be equally compensated to every other Chief of Staff on the board; this resulted in a 3–2 vote to delay my employment.
As womxn, we recognize that the gender pay and wage gap is an injustice that persists today through secrecy and disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable. I feel it is important to stand up in this moment and call out the injustice that I am facing as I pursue a new role. Womxn’s intellectual labor and contributions to our society are often devalued, overlooked, co-opted, and/or erased. That’s to say, what I’m about to share is not just about me; It’s about every womxn that bears the brunt of inequity, misogyny, and the disrespect of having your judgement questioned in the workplace.
Two weeks ago, Supervisor Tom Patti, along with Supervisors Robert Rickman and Miguel Villapudua, took the extraordinary step of challenging another Supervisor’s hiring decision and the County’s HR department in a public meeting on January, 26, 2021. Supervisor Patti specifically took issue with me entering my new role at the same pay grade as all other Chiefs of Staff. He argued that this was a fight for fairness; that I should come in at a lower pay grade and work my way up over time. To be clear, this is not normal: the Board of Supervisors reviews and approves, on average, 40 hires at the top pay grade of their classification each year, but my appointment was the one that was targeted. Supervisor Miller and the HR Director shared that hiring people at a higher pay grade is a common practice for “hard to recruit” positions. She highlighted in January’s meeting that she had verified the difficult recruitment by Supervisor Miller and approved the proposed compensation. This position is unique, because it is a short term contract, and therefore I would not have the same opportunity for advancement as the other Chiefs of Staff.
The bottom line is, I would be expected to do the same level of work for less pay.
Even after both Supervisor Miller and the HR Director validated my qualifications for this role and the hiring process, Supervisor Patti continued to question my worthiness and their experience. This is yet another example of how womxn’s judgement is continuously up for public debate, even when womxn are in positions of power.
This is about equal pay for equal work. I took this position with an open heart and mind, seeking to ensure the board is responsive to community needs, especially in unprecedented times that have left our black and brown communities bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. I have been feeling a mix of emotions about this, but the thought that has grounded me has been, “What if this were happening to a woman I know? My colleague, my friend, my cousin, my aunt. How would I react if this was happening to her?”
The problem is this story is not unique. This is one example of how systems allow men in positions of power justify or explain away womxn making less than their colleagues. The truth is today, Latinx women make 53 cents for every dollar a white man makes– Black womxn 61 cents, Asian American womxn 85 cents, Indigenous womxn 58 cents, and white womxn 77 cents (National Partnership). It is extremely difficult, particularly for womxn of color to advocate for themselves and navigate this system.
Pay is the first way that patriarchal systems devalue and degrade womxn’s intellectual labor and contributions to offer meaningful support to their communities. And pay inequity goes hand in hand with the compounding battles womxn face every day just to have their work recognized and valued. I want to draw attention to the Equal Pay for Equal Work movement that is happening on the national scale. This is not an isolated incident but a glimpse into the everyday struggles womxn face and is a part of a larger movement to bring gender equity and equality to the workplace.
I want womxn to know they are not alone in the issues they are facing, and injustice like this isn’t something we should normalize or deal with in isolation. When womxn do deal with it in isolation, it’s traumatic, it impacts our mental and physical health. To be told your work is not as valuable as that of others is traumatizing and instills self-doubt. And if I stay quiet, I’ll be doing a disservice to other womxn. For me to accept anything less than equal is telling other women that they don’t deserve equal pay. I speak out now in the hopes of ensuring that every womxn that follows in my footsteps doesn’t have to suffer the same blatant discrimination.
It’s ridiculous I have to explain this and do this labor; it is demoralizing and frustrating, but this is the reality of what womxn have to navigate every day to be taken seriously. The way we dismantle these power structures is by sharing the truth, and I will not be intimidated. I am here to serve my community and look forward to the upcoming board meeting on Tuesday, February 9, 2021 at 9AM.
If you would like to stand in solidarity, you can submit a public comment to the Clerk of the Board at sjcpubliccomments@sjgov.org (250 word max) or you can directly read your max 3 min. statement into the record by joining the general comment portion virtually at the start of Tuesday’s meeting.
Thank you to Supervisor Kathy Miller and all my colleagues who have supported me throughout this process– I couldn’t have told this story without you.
Link to public board letter by Sup. Miller + Link to 2/9 San Joaquin County BOS meeting
‘Womxn’ is the most recent of several alternative spellings for the English word, ‘woman,’ intended to be inclusive of transgender and nonbinary people.
