Gender- and Race-based Wage Inequities

By Erin Tucker

International Women's Day was Wednesday, March 8. The Institute for Women's Policy Research, a nonprofit based in Washington DC which conducts research with women as the central point of analysis, released its fact sheet this month on the gender wage gap in the US by occupation, ethnicity and race in the US.

Inequities remain. The headline of their fact sheet analyzing data from 2022 is "Women Earn Less Than Men Whether They Work in the Same or in Different Occupations."

Here are some takeaways:

In 2022 women earned less than men for full-time weekly work in almost all occupations, including in 19 of the largest 20 occupations for women and in all of the largest 20 occupations for men.

Black and Latina women’s median weekly pay for full-time work is substantially less than White men's. Black women’s women’s earnings were just 67.4 percent compared to that of White men, and Hispanic or Latina  wages were just 61.4 percent of White non-Hispanic men’s pay. Black and Latina women are over-represented in service occupations, but whether high or low paying, their median earnings are lower than men’s in the same occupational group.

Because women are more likely than men to hold part-time job (22.0 percent of women compared with 11.0 percent of men worked part-time in 2022), the wage gap widens when all workers earnings are considered. Women earned 77.4 percent compared to men when all weekly workers, both full-time and part-time, are included in the calculation.

If you feel you are being discriminated against in the work place because of your gender, race, ethnicity or disability, there may be legal recourse. We're here to help.

Below table from the institute for Public Policy Research.

---

---