However, there are very few situations in which women earn the same as men on average, regardless of how the data is sliced and diced. In fact, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research discovered that women earned less than men in all 20 of the major occupations for both men and women, as well as in its most recent examination of median weekly wages by occupation from the previous year.
The most glaring wage disparities among the most common occupations for women were found in financial management (71% of every dollar earned by a man), retail sales (72%), administrative assistants (80%), managers (81%), and education and child care administrators (79%). The group with the smallest wage disparity was cashiers, where 98% of female coworkers are paid similarly to their male counterparts.
the same obnoxious tale every year
Even though the gender pay gap has generally decreased over time—Equal Pay Day was observed on April 19, 2005, which is five weeks later than it is this year—the fact that there is still a gender pay gap in 2024 serves as a reminder to employers and society at large that they still need to do more to value the contributions that women make to the workplace.
The president and CEO of IWPR, Jamila Taylor, said in a statement that “the gender wage gap is a national disgrace.” Men get paid more for doing the same job, even in fields where women are traditionally overrepresented.
Despite the fact that equal pay for equal work has been a national policy for over 50 years, women are still not treated fairly in the workplace or in terms of income.
Even worse, women of color continue to experience persistent pay disparities on top of widespread racial discrimination in the workplace.
Fortunately, there are now several initiatives underway that could eventually contribute to lessening the issue. These include a growing number of state-level pay transparency legislation and prohibitions on employers requesting compensation histories from job applicants, which can help historically underpaid women obtain greater parity when they apply for new positions.
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