Women in America continue to suffer from the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap is the difference between the average earnings of men and women. It is calculated by comparing the median hourly earnings of all men and women in a particular country or region.
In the United States, the gender pay gap is 18 cents on the dollar. This means that women working full-time earn an average of 82% of what men earn. The gap is even wider for women of color. Black women earn 62 cents on the dollar, and Hispanic women earn 54 cents on the dollar.
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Once upon a time, people simply accepted the idea that women could not be professionals like doctors or lawyers. And if a women was a doctor she was expected to be a gynecologist or an apediatrician. And women were also discriminated against in fields like law enforcement on all levels, anywhere that the excuse could be made that women were not physically capable of such work.
But today everything has changed. While men still greatly outnumber women in most professions, it is no longer unusual to see women doctors and lawyers, or even cops everywhere that one goes. Unfortunately, women in America still do not get paid the same as men for the same work.
And many women professionals need to take time off from their careers if they have children, losing time in which men build up their experiences and seniority.
A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that the gender gap in pay has remained relatively stable in the United States over the past 20 years or so. In 2022, women earned an average of 82% of what men earned, according to Pew’s analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers. These results are similar to where the pay gap stood in 2002, when women earned 80% as much as men.
This is in spite of the fact that, as the Center for American Progress reports, since the second half of the 20th century, women’s labor force participation has grown significantly. Women are working longer hours and pursuing higher education in greater numbers. However, despite this progress, significant wage gaps between men and women persist—particularly for women of color. So what exactly is the gender wage gap? What drives it? And what does it mean for women and their families? This fact sheet provides answers to these questions and more.
