In honor of International Women’s Day, I’m looking at women’s pay.
Women on average earn 81.2 cents for every $1 men make in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That ratio has climbed on and off for years, yet by some estimates it could take decades before women reach parity.
Women working full-time earned $679 a week, while men took home $51 a week more – though the disparity grew to hundreds of dollars a week in some occupations. Here’s five where women are underpaid compared to their male counterparts:
- Personal financial advisors only 58.4 percent
- Property and real estate managers 65.3 percent
- Insurance sales agents 66 percent
- Human resources managers 69.3 percent
- Lawyers 74.9 percent
Even in the most common occupation for women, elementary and middle school teachers, the 1.98 million women earn 85.7 percent of their male colleagues, according to the BLS. The gap is much less for high school and post-secondary teachers, however, in part because the ratio of men to women is less lopsided.
I won’t get into all the reasons for the pay gap here, in the interest of time and brevity, though clearly, discrimination, unintentional and deliberate, still plays a role.
Yet a few jobs pay women more. Here’s a look at five with a positive ratio to men’s weekly earnings:
- Dining room attendants, 111.1 percent
- Bill collectors, 109.5 percent
- Life and social science technicians, 102.4 percent
- Teacher’s assistant, 104.6 percent.
- Bakers, 104.0 percent
I can’t help but note that the jobs where women earn more than men are among the lower paying occupations while in big paycheck jobs, whether CEO or pharmacist or surgeon, men take home 15 to 25 percent more than women. One possible exception: Women who work part-time – usually 30 hours a week – make the same or slightly more than men. That’s 100 percent of men’s wages for shorter work weeks and mostly modest paying jobs.
Yes, women have much to celebrate and a strong need to support each other – and press for more and better salaries too.
