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Table of contents
Table of contents
More than ever before, women in the U.S. are taking control of their finances, investing in their future selves and making smart money choices.
But there’s still one obstacle in their way today: the gender pay gap.
Census Bureau data for 2023 estimates women working full time, year-round earned 83 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned. Evidence of the gender pay gap is as well-documented as it is longstanding, but the extent to which it’s even worse for women of color and women who work in finance and insurance shows how stubborn and entrenched the problem is, according to a new Bankrate analysis of Census Bureau data.
The gender pay gap impacts all women, but not in the same way. It’s even more pronounced for certain racial and ethnic groups, industries and jobs. Where a woman lives can influence how much she earns compared to her male counterpart, and even education has yet to close the pay gap between women and men, despite more than half of women in the workforce having a college degree and prime-age women (ages 25-54) participating in the workforce at record rates.
Unequal pay leaves women working with less, ultimately impacting their ability to save money, pay down debt and achieve financial security. Women on average stand to lose more than $450,000 over a 40-year career because of the gender pay gap, according to Bankrate’s calculations. The losses are even greater for Black and Hispanic women over a 40-year career: roughly $1 million and $1.3 million, respectively.
To shine a brighter spotlight on the gender pay gap, Bankrate analyzed Census Bureau data to determine where the widest gender pay gaps exist across industries, jobs and states — and who they’re impacting the most.
Women of color are hit the hardest by the gender pay gap. On average, Black women working full time, year-round earned 67 percent as much as white, non-Hispanic men in 2023. Hispanic women earned only 58 percent as much, according to Bankrate’s analysis of Census Bureau data.
Asian women are the closest to reaching pay equality as of 2023, making 94 cents for every dollar a white, non-Hispanic man earned. White women working full time, year-round earned 80 percent as much as their male counterparts in 2023, similar to the overall gender pay gap.
The pay gap has narrowed for all groups of women over the last three decades, but more so for white and Asian women than for Black and Hispanic women. Here’s how much the earnings gap narrowed for each group between 1988 and 2023:
Economists and financial experts say the gender pay gap is fueled by gender discrimination, the increased likelihood of women ending up in lower-paying jobs, lack of family-friendly policies and the motherhood penalty. For Black and Hispanic women, racial discrimination is also part of the equation.
Dr. Nicole Smith, chief economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, says Black and Hispanic women are more likely to experience employment and promotion discrimination than other groups, making it even more difficult for them to move up in their careers or achieve higher pay.
About a quarter of employed women (23 percent) said they have experienced discrimination because of their gender, while only 1 in 10 employed men say the same, a 2023 Pew Research poll found. The same poll found roughly 40 percent of Black workers and 20 percent of Hispanic workers said they have experienced discrimination or been treated unfairly by an employer in hiring, pay or promotions because of their race or ethnicity, compared to eight percent of white workers.
The wider wage gap between Black and Hispanic women and white, non-Hispanic men can be attributed to the fact that fewer Black and Hispanic Americans are college-educated compared to white or Asian Americans, according to Pew Research. But even when looking at Black and Hispanic women with a bachelor’s degree or higher, Census Bureau data shows the pay gap persists.
“There’s still the glass ceiling, whereby it’s difficult for women to move upwards in certain types of education or certain types of occupations,” Smith says. “As much as we’re in a post-racial America, racial and ethnic discrimination is still there.”
Every industry has a gender pay gap, but the gap is wider in certain sectors. Bankrate looked at the gender pay gap across more than 25 industries and found that the pay gap was largest in the finance and insurance industry. Women made up over half of workers (54 percent) in the finance and insurance industry in 2023, but they earned 63 cents on the dollar, on average, compared to men, Census Bureau data shows.
In the ’80s in the financial industry, there were no women. If you were a woman, it was like you were an alien with three heads. It just didn’t exist, so it’s still a young profession in terms of even allowing women in.
Even though there are more women in the financial services sector today, North says it’s still a challenging industry to navigate as a woman and negatively affects women’s desire to stay.
“There’s still a lot of bias and microaggressions,” North says. “They’re less likely to stick it out because they know they have to sort of play a man’s game, and that’s really frustrating. I see it a lot.”
Other industries with the widest gender pay gaps are:
Within industries, there’s occupational segregation between men and women. Smith says women are more likely to move into lower-paying jobs within an industry even when they have similar education backgrounds as men, leading to broader wage differences between men and women in the same industry. Smith points to STEM as an example.
“Even when you talk about the percentage of women in STEM, women tend to self-segregate,” Smith says. “Pharmaceuticals and biological sciences are examples of this. In the biological sciences, it’s one of the STEM categories that has the lowest compensation and it’s dominated by women.”
Education is another example of an industry where occupational segregation impacts women’s earnings. Dr. Carolyn Sloane, a labor economist, found in her research that men in the education field are twice as likely to move into higher-paying management roles and women in the same field are twice as likely to go into lower-paying administrative support roles, although women are twice as likely to major in education.
There are several industries where the gender pay gap is narrower. The construction industry has the smallest pay gap, at about 95 cents for every dollar a man earns. Other industries with the smallest gender pay gaps are:
After analyzing pay disparities across more than 30 occupations, Bankrate found the pay gap is largest for legal occupations — with women earning nearly 55 percent as much as their male counterparts as of 2023.
Sales and related occupations have the second-biggest pay gap between men and women, with women in those occupations earning 56 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn. Other occupations with the widest pay gaps are:
Many jobs with smaller or non-existent gender pay gaps tend to be dominated by women. These occupations have the smallest gender pay gaps:
Where you live affects your job, overall well-being and lifestyle. If you’re a woman, it can also affect your earnings. The pay gaps across states partly reflect the differences in the jobs and industries within each state and the demographic differences in each state’s workforce.
These are the top five states with the smallest gender pay gaps:
These are the bottom five states with the largest gender pay gaps:
There are two ways to look at the progress of the gender pay gap — it depends on how far you zoom out. In 1988, women earned roughly 66 percent as much as men, and by 2023, women earned 83 percent as much as men, Census Bureau data shows.
However, over the last two decades, the gender pay gap has remained in somewhat of a holding pattern. From 2000 to 2010, it increased by three percentage points and by almost six percentage points between 2011 and 2023.
Smith says there isn’t a single explanation for why the gender gap has barely budged in the last two decades, but that it’s likely due to a combination of factors: limited progress in policies that benefit women in the workplace, such as paid family leave or childcare benefits; the types of college degrees and jobs women pursue; discrimination; and broader economic factors. Caregiving responsibilities also continue to fall largely on the shoulders of women, leaving many feeling like they have to take on a lower-paying job with more flexibility or leave the workforce altogether to balance family responsibilities.
A lot of women are being forced to make tough decisions, which plays out in terms of where they end up in their job and how much they get paid. The work environment itself just doesn’t lend itself to women staying for a significant length of time.
The responsibility isn’t on individual women to fix the gender pay gap, but there are steps women can actively take to ensure they’re advocating for themselves and becoming more confident with their finances, even if they’re working with less. Consider doing the following to grow your financial wealth:
“We have to walk into those boardrooms and into those meeting rooms with that knowledge of what we deserve, how much we ought to be getting and negotiate strongly for that first pay,” Smith says. “We have to keep pushing the envelope because, without that, we will be having this conversation 10 years from now.”
To determine which racial and ethnic groups have the widest gender pay gaps, Bankrate aggregated and analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) supplement. Women’s earnings as a percentage of White, non-Hispanic men’s between 1988 and 2023 are based on the median annual earnings of full-time, year-round workers aged 15 and up. To calculate gender pay gaps in states, industries and jobs, Bankrate aggregated and analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) for 2023 showing median annual earnings of full-time, year-round workers aged 16 and up. All data included in this study is adjusted for inflation.
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Table of contents
Fighting the gender pay gap: 8 working women shed light on how they’re advocating for equal pay
26% of working women are leaving free money on the table that could set back their retirement
Building financial independence for women through financial literacy
Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories, except where prohibited by law for our mortgage, home equity and other home lending products. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range, can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range of offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
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Gender pay gaps vary by state, industry, job and race and ethnicity. Here’s where pay disparities are the widest – Bankrate
