Wage Gap

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.

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