Gender pay gap barely budged in past two decades

US admin discusses raising the debt ceiling

The gender pay gap is not closing. Women have earned roughly 82 percent as much as men for the last 20 years.

A recently published Pew Research Center analysis found that women’s median hourly earnings are a percentage of men’s. 

Although women continue to outpace men in educational attainment and more have taken on higher-paying jobs than in previous years, progress in narrowing the gender pay gap has stalled, especially compared to 20th-century strides.

The roughly 82 cents to the dollar women made in 2022 is a leap forward from the 1982 average of 65 cents. 

But it is only slightly more than the 80 cents they earned in 2002.

The gaps are more staggering for Black and Hispanic women, who earned 70 cents and 65 cents, respectively, to every dollar earned by a white man in 2022.

Half of the respondents to a Pew survey in October attributed the gender pay gap to employers treating women differently. 

Pew noted that further progress in closing the gender pay gap could hinge on changing social and cultural attitudes and ensuring workplace flexibility to allow both men and women to better balance careers and family lives.

There’s a disproportionate number of men in senior and higher-paid roles. 

Family caregiving responsibilities bring different pressures for working women and men, and research has shown that being a mother can reduce women’s earnings, while fatherhood can increase men’s earnings.

The U.S. Census Bureau has also analyzed the gender pay gap, though its analysis looks only at full-time workers, as opposed to including both full- and part-time workers. 

In 2021, full-time, year-round working women earned 84 percent of what their male counterparts earned, on average, according to the Census Bureau’s most recent analysis.

Experts say that the worsening gap is hugely worrying. 

The data represents a global issue. Experts are calling out the lack of action from employers and previous governments. 

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