Gender Pay Gap Snapshot

According to Payscale, the pay gap between men and women is 17 cents: i.e., women earn 83 cents for each dollar men earn. However, that is the “Uncontrolled” difference between averages for all women and all men, regardless of occupation, education, etc. The “Controlled” pay gap, which is based on an “apples to apples” comparison is one cent: women earn 99 cents compared to each dollar men earn. Payscale presents a variety of different “cuts” on the data, but the bottom line is that the gap never closes completely. Parental status and increasing age have negative impacts on women’s earnings as well. The move toward pay transparency may help to ameliorate this situation, but since that is being done at the state and local levels, there are no uniform results to report. The pay gap is at or near zero in the fields of Real Estate/Rental/Leasing, Education, Construction, Technology, Healthcare, Non-profits and Engineering and Science. So, progress is being made. And discrimination based on gender IS illegal. 

In a partially-related development, according to a study done by the National Women’s Law Center, the move toward more pay transparency in some states has led to more transparency in states that have passed such legislation.