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  • Scoop Market Mysteries 3-27-22 - Gender Pay Gap

Scoop Market Mysteries 3-27-22 - Gender Pay Gap

🔎 Market Mysteries: Do women really earn less than men?

March 27, 2022

 Market Mysteries of the week

  Is the gender pay gap real?

Answer:

Yes, yes it is. Women earn less than men, regardless of education, industry, or management level.

How big is the gender pay gap?

Women earn 82¢ for every $1 men make

, meaning that

. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects data on men and women who work full-time (35 hours or more per week) in wage and salary jobs and calculates the median weekly earnings to compute this gender pay gap. The US BLS breaks this information down into various categories such as age, race, education, and occupation to see how these factors correlate to pay. Looking at median values instead of average (mean) values is the best way to look at data when dealing with datasets with extreme values, such as salaries, because extremely low or high salaries can disproportionately skew the calculation.

How has the gender pay gap progressed?

Since 1979, we have seen the gender pay gap shrink significantly, but those gains have slowed in recent years

. The current 82% is an improvement from

. This ratio of women's earnings to men's grew the most in the '80s (from 64-70%), and the '90s (from 72% to 77%), but has been relatively stagnant since 2004, remaining in the 80-83% range.

Is the issue a lack of education?

Women are just as educated as men.

Women account for

in the US. And women earn more than 57% of all undergraduate degrees, 59% of all master's degrees, 49% of all law degrees, 48% of all medical degrees, 38% of all MBA's, and 49% of all specialized master's degrees. It's been

Are women paid less because they are in lower-paying jobs?

It's not that simple

. Some argue that women make less because they choose lower-paying occupations. But i

n many low-paying occupations, men still make more than women

.

Let's look at education and childcare administration positions, for example. Women account for 516,036 (64.4%) full-time positions in this field while men make up 285,342 (35.6%) of these positions. But

. Women account for 66.7% of customer service representative occupations and 90.2% of dietitian and nutritionist positions but earn 86.4% and 95.2% of what men make. So

even in fields dominated by women, men still get paid more

.

evaluated by the US Department of Labor, such as health care social work.

Feel free to play around with this interactive tool from the US Department of Labor on Employment and Earnings by Occupation (used for the above information):

Then it must depend on the level of position, right?

Regardless of level, women are paid less

. Full-time positions in management, business, and financial operations had the highest median weekly earnings of any significant occupational category in 2020 for both men and women. But men in these positions made $1,667 in median weekly earnings while women in these positions made $1,274,

. Women in this category who are chief executives earned $2,051 weekly, while

male chief executives earned more

at $2,712 weekly, a

How has the pandemic impacted gender disparities?

The pandemic forced many women out of the workforce.

In May 2020, women accounted for

Women were hit hardest because they held many jobs in industries that saw steep cuts. Jobs in personal care, food preparation, and healthcare support were severely impacted as businesses closed.

Women also made up

, so they were

very likely to experience burnout

.

compared to one in four a few months before the pandemic. Women with a high school education

than similarly educated men. With more than 1 million women missing from the labor force, the disappearance of many low-paid positions caused the median earnings for women working full-time to rise in 2020,

. 

How is the labor shortage impacting women's wages?

Despite experiencing setbacks during the pandemic,

women are experiencing the fastest recovery in earnings and employment

. Businesses are paying higher wages to attract workers back. Women's wages have increased faster than men's over the past year,

These gains are helping women regain ground in the workforce.

There's still much work to do to close the wage gap. Discuss your pay with your coworkers.

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