When women are paid less because of their gender, it is a form of sex discrimination and is illegal. The following statistics show how women are often underpaid in the United States.
Women Earn Less Than Men Across the Board
A woman working full-time on average earns 83 cents for every dollar a man earns, and women’s median annual earnings are more than $10,000 less than men’s.Meanwhile, the pay gap is larger for women of color as Black women make 63 cents and Latinx women make 58 cents. Asian women made 93 cents while White women made 80 cents.
Women must work three months longer on average to equal what men earned in a year. For mothers, women of color, and LGBTQ+ women, it takes even longer.A common argument is that women choose jobs that just inherently pay less. But even if men and women were equal parts of each occupation, that would only close the pay gap by 32%.
What Pay Inequity Looks Like at Highest and Lowest
Most states have implemented laws against gender discrimination, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects women at the federal level even though disparities persist. In Wyoming, for instance, the gender pay gap is $21,676, the largest wage gap in the nation. Vermont has the smallest pay gap, with full-time, year-round working women making $46,641 on average to a man’s $51,241, a difference of $4,600.
The Equal Pay Act
The Equal Pay Act does not mandate that jobs held by men and women must be identical for purposes of receiving the same pay, but that they should be “substantially equal”—which is the government’s way of saying that each performs much of the same duties regardless of job title. The Equal Pay Act does permit aggrieved workers to take their complaints up directly with the state or federal court system without having to first file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
