The Cost of Being a Woman: Understanding why women pay more and women of color pay most

You’re invited to an evening of powerful conversation about the true cost of being a woman, and how racism and sexism intersect to make that cost even higher for women of color.

Date: Thursday, December 11, 2025
Time: 5:30 pm (Doors open at 5 p.m.)
Location: Luminary, New York City 

Featuring:

• Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, author of The Double Tax

• Francesca Donner, moderator, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Persistent and former Gender Director, The New York Times
  

Why attend?

You’ve heard of the pink tax, the added cost women pay simply to exist in the same world as men. But for women of color, that cost increases.

In The Double Tax, Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman reveals how racism and sexism combine to make everyday life more expensive, more time-consuming, and more exhausting for women of color.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and studies, Anna reframes how we think about equity, value, and power, and why reducing the cost of being a woman starts with ensuring no woman is left behind.

“I wrote The Double Tax … because I wanted to make clear to anyone willing to listen that the individual costs we face as women of color today become societal costs for everyone else tomorrow.” — Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman

This event continues Working for Women’s ongoing conversation on Women, Money, and Power, examining how systems of wealth and opportunity can shift to create true equity.

We look forward to seeing you there! Limited books will be available.

Hosted by Working for Women in partnership with Luminary and The Persistent, a media company dedicated to amplifying women’s voices, stories, perspectives and ideas. Sign up for the (free!) newsletter here.

Meet Anna:

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman is a doctoral candidate at Harvard Kennedy School studying public policy and economics. She is a doctoral fellow for the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Center for Black Entrepreneurship, Roosevelt Institute, Russell Sage Foundation, and Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality & Social Policy and a graduate affiliate at Harvard Kennedy
School's Women and Public Policy Center and the Institute for Quantitative Science.

Her first book, The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System (2022), is the first trade publication to exclusively feature Black scholars and experts across economics, education, health, climate, criminal justice, and technology. She also co-founded #BlackBirdersWeek in 2019 and The Sadie Collective in 2018 — the first non-profit addressing the underrepresentation of Black women in economics and related fields. The youngest recipient of the CEDAW Women's Rights Award from the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women—an honor previously given to Vice President Kamala Harris—her writing and commentary appear in TIME, Bloomberg, NPR, and The New York Times.

In 2023, she was selected to be part of the inaugural Forbes 30 under 30 Boston cohort. In 2025,Common Future selected her as one of their “Futurists of the Year” given her focus on economic inequality. Her second book, The Double Tax, published by Penguin/Portfolio and Little Brown Books UK, explores the costs women face, why the bill runs higher for women of color, and why closing the gaps helps everyone.

I understand my attendance signifies that photographic or video recordings of me may be displayed electronically or in print via Luminary's website, social media or shared with event partners for their promotional use. For questions or to opt out of photographic and video displays please email events@weareluminary.com