 |
The Wage Gap
Source: National Women's Law Center.
The wage gap is a statistical indicator often used as an index of the
status of women's earnings relative to men's. It is also used to compare
the earnings of other races and ethnicities to those of white males, a
group generally not subject to race- or sex-based discrimination. The wage
gap is expressed as a percentage (e.g., in 2006, women earned 76.6% as
much as men) and is calculated by dividing the median annual earnings for
women by the median annual earnings for men.
The Equal Pay Act was signed in 1963, making it illegal for employers
to pay unequal wages to men and women who hold the same job and do the
same work. At the time of the EPA's passage, women earned just 58 cents
for every dollar earned by men. By 2006, that rate had only increased to
77 cents, an improvement of less than half a penny a year. Minority women
fare the worst. African-American women earn just 64 cents to every dollar
earned by white men, and for Hispanic women that figure drops to merely 52
cents per dollar.
The wage gap between women and men cuts across a wide spectrum of
occupations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2007 female
financial advisors earned 53.7% of the median weekly wages of male
financial advisors, and women in sales occupations earned just 64.8% of
men's wages in equivalent positions.
If working women earned the same as men (those who work the same number
of hours; have the same education, age, and union status; and live in the
same region of the country), their annual family incomes would rise by
$4,000 and poverty rates would be cut in half.
Over the past 40 years the real median earnings of women have fallen
short by an estimated $700,000 to $2 million. During a lifetime of
full-time work (47 years) this gap amounts to an estimated loss in wages
for women of $700,000 for high school graduates, $1.2 million for a
college graduate, and $2 million for a professional school graduate.
See also:
Median Annual Income by Level of
Education and Sex
Occupations with Highest Median Earnings
Among Women
20 Leading Occupations of Employed
Women
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education,
Inc. All rights reserved.
More on Wage Gap from Infoplease:
|
|
