Gender Wage Gap

Question 1

How is the gender pay gap?

Answer 1

For example, in 2021: Women made up an estimated 44 percent of the overall workforce, but an estimated 41 percent of managers. Women earned an estimated 82 cents for every dollar that men earned (an overall pay gap of 18 cents on the dollar).

Question 2

What factors impact the gender pay gap?

Answer 2

The gender pay gap is the result of many factors, including race and ethnicity, disability, access to education and age. As a result, different groups of women experience very different gaps in pay. The gender pay gap is a complex issue that will require robust and inclusive solutions.

Question 3

The gender pay gap varies substantially from state to state, due to factors such as:

Answer 3

The primary industries in the state and the opportunities they create
Demographics such as race/ethnicity, age, and education level
Regional differences in attitudes and beliefs about work and gender
Differences in the scope and strength of state pay discrimination laws and policies

Question 4

How many out of 114 had statistically significant gap?

Answer 4

In a comparison of occupations with at least 50,000 men and 50,000 women in 2017, 107 out of 114 had statistically significant gaps in pay that favored men; six occupations had no significant gap; and just one had a gap favoring women.

Question 5

What explains the Gender Pay Gap?

Answer 5

While many factors contribute to the gender wage gap, including discriminatory practices, research suggests that time away from employment, occupational clustering, and the time demands of jobs explain much of the difference in wages between men and women.

Question 6

Do women often drop out of the labor force?

Answer 6

Traditionally, many women dropped out of the labor force for some time in their childbearing years. Though there have been significant changes in this pattern in recent decades, women often do not have the same continuity of work experience as their male counterparts, which contributes to lower wages.

Question 7

Do women eek positions that lend themselves to family responsibilities?

Answer 7

One study finds that only 15 percent of the gender wage gap would be eliminated if men and women were equally represented in each occupation, but 85 percent would be eliminated if they were paid equally within each occupation. This is in part because even within occupations, women disproportionately seek positions that lend themselves to family responsibilities, jobs that are more flexible in the timing of work hours and less likely to have weekend and evening obligations.
These positions pay less than more inflexible jobs within the same occupation, especially in higher paying fields such as law and finance, where employees face many deadlines, develop close relationships with clients, and work in specialized teams.

Question 8

How is the gender wage gap calculated?

Answer 8

The gender wage gap is defined as the difference between median earnings of men and women relative to median earnings of men.

Question 9

What causes the gender wage gap?

Answer 9

These wage gap calculations reflect the ratio of earnings for women and men across all industries; they do not reflect a direct comparison of women and men doing identical work. This is purposeful. Calculating it this way allows experts to capture the multitude of factors driving the gender wage gap, which include but are not limited to:

Question 10

How does occupational segregation affect women’s earnings?

Answer 10

And occupational segregation is a major cause for the persistent wage gap. Our analysis confirms that average earnings tend to be lower the higher the percentage of female workers in an occupation, and that this relationship is strongest for the most highly skilled occupations, such as medicine or law.

Question 11

Why is occupational segregation a problem?

Answer 11

By calculating a wholistic wage gap, researchers can see effects of occupational segregation, or the funneling of women and men into different types of industries and jobs based on gender norms and expectations. So-called women’s jobs, which are jobs that have historically had majority-female workforces, such as home health aides and child care workers, tend to offer lower pay and fewer benefits than so-called men’s jobs, which are jobs that have had predominantly male workforces, including jobs in trades such as building and construction. These gendered differences are true across all industries and the vast majority of occupations, at all levels, from frontline workers to midlevel managers to senior leaders.8

Question 12

How does differences in hours worked affect the gender wage gap?

Answer 12

Because women tend to work fewer hours to accommodate caregiving and other unpaid obligations, they are also more likely to work part time, which means lower hourly wages and fewer benefits compared with full-time workers.10

Question 13

How does discrimination affect gender pay gap ?

Answer 13

Gender-based pay discrimination has been illegal11 since 1963 but is still a frequent, widespread practice—particularly for women of color.12 It can thrive especially in workplaces that discourage open discussion of wages and where employees fear retaliation. Beyond explicit decisions to pay women less than men, employers may discriminate in pay when they rely on prior salary history in hiring and compensation decisions; this can enable pay decisions that could have been influenced by discrimination to follow women from job to job.

Question 14

What is the pay gap between men and women who were the same job (adjusting for differences in age, education and part-time working status)?

Answer 14

The researchers found that gender remains a substantial source of the overall earnings gaps in all 15 countries. For example, after adjusting for differences in age, education and part-time working status, the gender gap in earnings between men and women ages 30-55 ranged from 10% in Hungary to 41% in South Korea. The within-job earnings gap in those countries were 9.5% and 18.8%, respectively, according to the paper.

In the U.S, the overall earnings gap was almost 30%. For men and women who performed the same job in the U.S., men out-earned women by 14%.

Question 15

What are some of the solutions to same job gender pay gap?

Answer 15

“If there are sizeable differences between the pay that women and men receive when they do the same work for the same employer, then policies mandating equal pay have an important role to play in creating gender equality,” she said. “We should also have policies focusing on organizational hiring and promotion practices that match people to jobs, as well as on fostering broader societal views regarding whose work is defined as valuable, because women’s work is far too often undervalued.

Question 16

What is the Equal Pay Act in simple terms?

Answer 16

The Equal Pay Act requires that men and women in the same workplace be given equal pay for equal work. The jobs need not be identical, but they must be substantially equal. Job content (not job titles) determines whether jobs are substantially equal.

Question 17

What was the effect of the Equal Pay Act?

Answer 17

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was the first in a series of major federal and state laws that had a profound effect on job opportunities and earnings for women over the next half century, and laid the foundation for the movement of women into the paid labor force at unprecedented levels.

Question 18

Are women more likely to be college educated?

Answer 18

The growing gender gap in higher education – both in enrollment and graduation rates – has been a topic of conversation and debate in recent months. Young women are more likely to be enrolled in college today than young men, and among those ages 25 and older, women are more likely than men to have a four-year college degree. The gap in college completion is even wider among younger adults ages 25 to 34.

Question 19

What is the gender wage gap for Black and Hispanic women?

Answer 19

Many women of color were paid even less. For example, Black women were paid 64%, and Hispanic women (of any race) were paid 57% of what white non-Hispanic men were paid.

Question 20

Can the distinct pattern of lower pay be comprehensively understood?

Answer 20

These are useful numbers to help identify a distinct pattern of lower pay, but by themselves these figures do little to help us understand why women’s pay is lower.

In 2020, the Women’s Bureau collaborated with the U.S. Census Bureau to conduct what is currently the most comprehensive analysis of the gender wage gap to date. The data shows that the majority of the gap between men and women’s wages cannot be explained through measurable differences between workers, such as age, education, industry or work hours. It is highly likely that at least some of this unmeasured portion is the result of discrimination, but it is impossible to capture exactly in a statistical model.

Question 21

Are female dominated fields like childcare workers, domestic workers, and home health aides more likely to pay less?

Answer 21

First, the jobs where women are most likely to work pay lower wages overall than jobs with a majority of men. This is especially true of jobs in care work, such as childcare workers, domestic workers, and home health aides, all of which pay below average wages. And while it does not contribute directly to the wage gap, women-dominated jobs also are less likely to include benefits like employer-provided health insurance and retirement plans compared to occupations dominated by men.

Question 22

In 300 detailed occupations, there are none where women have an earnings advantage over men, but hundreds where men have significantly higher earnings than women?

Answer 22

Second, even within these female-dominated jobs, women are paid less on average than men in the same job. When comparing more than 300 detailed occupations, there are none where women have an earnings advantage over men, but hundreds where men have significantly higher earnings than women. A new interactive data tool from the Women’s Bureau compares the wage gap by sex, race, ethnicity and occupation group. Regardless of occupation group, women always have lower average earnings than men, and Black and Hispanic women nearly always have the largest wage gaps of any group of women when compared to white non-Hispanic men.

Question 23

Does work get devalued when more women enter a field?

Answer 23

Occupations with a greater share of females pay less than those with a lower share, controlling for education and skill. This association is explained by two dominant views: devaluation and queuing. The former views the pay offered in an occupation to affect its female proportion, due to employers’ preference for men–a gendered labor queue. The latter argues that the proportion of females in an occupation affects pay, owing to devaluation of work done by women.

Question 24

How should the gap be addressed?

Answer 24

Efforts to close the gap must address occupational and industrial segregation, in addition to discrimination and other unmeasurable factors that drive down women’s, and especially women of color’s, pay. This will require supporting women entering male-dominated fields, raising wages and job quality across all sectors and especially in women-dominated jobs, and ensuring racial and gender equity in all jobs including in the high growth fields creating the jobs of the future.

Question 25

What is the motherhood penalty?

Answer 25

Due to the Motherhood Penalty, mothers make 58 cents for every dollar paid to fathers. Part of the explanation for this is the fact that women remain more likely than men to take time away from the workforce or to reduce their work hours because of caregiving responsibilities.

Question 26

What does motherhood penalty mean?

Answer 26

Mothers suffer a penalty relative to non-mothers and men in the form of lower perceived competence and commitment, higher professional expectations, lower likelihood of hiring and promotion, and lower recommended salaries. This evidence implies that being a mother leads to discrimination in the workplace.

Question 27

Are women more likely to work part time?

Answer 27

Women around the world are also more likely than men to work part-time. And part-time work, even for the same kind of job in the same occupation and sector, has a lower hourly wage with fewer social protections and benefits than comparable full-time work. According to the ILO, women account for about 57% of global part-time work, and the earnings gap between comparable full-time and part-time work is in the order of 10%.

Question 28

Is there evidence for a wage penalty for motherhood?

Answer 28

There’s evidence of a wage penalty for motherhood: all else being equal, there is a negative relationship between a woman’s wage and the number of children she has. According to OECD data, the motherhood penalty amounts to about a 7% wage reduction per child. There is also some evidence of a fatherhood premium: a positive relationship between a man’s wage and the number of children he has.

Question 29

Does discrimination, stereotyping and implicit biases still play a role?

Answer 29

Finally, and this is significant: even taking out the education effect, the occupation effect, the sector effect, the part-time work effect,and the motherhood and fatherhood effects, a gender gap in earnings remains. This gap is evidence of persistent discrimination, stereotyping and implicit biases in earnings and promotion opportunities for women. Government policies, legal protections, and changes in business practices, such as regular pay assessments of earnings by gender and pay transparency, are necessary to combat these sources of the gender gap in pay.