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Make a donation to Oxfam to help families in 80 countries overcome poverty, hunger, and injustice.
Men and women earn unequal pay. Here’s why—and what we can do to close the gap.
Have you ever wondered why Equal Pay Day exists? Equal Pay Day symbolizes just how far into the year women have to work to earn what men earned in the previous year. In 2023, women working full-time, year-round earned 83 cents for every dollar a man made. For women of color, the gap is even greater. In 2024, Equal Pay Day fell on March 12. This year, Equal Pay Day is 13 days later—March 25—reflecting a drop in the pay women earn compared to men.
In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the gender pay gap had widened for the first time in 20 years. The median annual income of full-time women workers is $55,240, which is $11,550 less than the median annual income of men.
“Across every industry, every education level, every city, and every job, women are paid less than men,” says Mica Whitfield, co-president and CEO of 9to5, the National Association of Working Women. The main culprit? Inequality. “Wage disparities don’t happen in a vacuum; they result from systematic racism, classism, and sexism.”
At Oxfam, we’ve been fighting for women’s rights for years, working with organizations like 9to5 to advocate for policies that support and protect working women. In this explainer, we take a look at why the gender pay gap exists and what you can help do about it.
The gender pay gap is the difference in earnings between women and men. Women are paid less than men for many reasons—including gender discrimination in hiring and workplace policies, lost earnings potential when leaving the job market to take care of children, and insufficient worker protection laws.
“Discrimination against pregnant and lactating workers, a lack of paid family and medical leave, and a lack of the right to paid sick time—all of these drag down wages for women, particularly women of color,” says Elizabeth Gedmark, vice president of A Better Balance, a nonprofit dedicated to work-family justice legal advocacy.
This is intentional: The U.S. has a history of underpaying and undervaluing the work that women do. When the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed into law in 1938, it purposefully excluded sectors in which Black workers were concentrated. The history of Black women’s labor in America is rooted in race and gender discrimination. “The fact that white men earn more than Black men and the fact that Black women earn less stems directly from practices and policies that are based on the value placed on Black women during institutionalized slavery,” Cassandra Welchlin, executive director of Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, an organization dedicated to advancing women’s economic security, told Oxfam.
“The pay gap isn’t just about money,” adds Natalie A. Collier, president and founder of the Lighthouse | Black Girl Projects, an organization that uplifts Black girls and women. “It’s about a value system.”
Women’s labor is undervalued in the United States. Even when a woman is as qualified as a man for the same role, she is likely to be underpaid.
Workplace discrimination may not always be obvious. Women tend to start their careers paid less than men and Welchlin says that due to a lack of workplace protections and supportive policies, women remain behind the power curve, unaware of the extent of the gaps in pay.
The racial pay gap is intrinsically connected to the gender pay gap. One of the main drivers of these gaps is occupational segregation, which means that people of different races and genders are unevenly represented in particular jobs, which have very different wages, benefits, and working conditions. Oxfam research shows that women of color are disproportionately represented in low-wage jobs.
Women’s work is undervalued in all sectors, and women of color continue to face additional discrimination, including pay inequities within virtually all occupations. Despite working critical jobs, women of color are paid significantly less than white men:
Wage gaps can compound to hundreds of thousands of dollars lost through the course of their careers, says Whitfield. Full-time, year-round working women lose up to $400k over the course of their careers.
The gender pay gap affects not just women. Society at large is worse off when women have less money to support and care for their families, less money to invest in their communities, and less money for the future.
To close the wage gap in the United States, we must compensate equal work for equal pay regardless of an employee’s race, gender, ethnicity, age, religion or other non-job-related factors.
“Raising wages alone will not address problematic workplace policies and societal power structures that create and perpetuate the inequalities many working women face,” says Whitfield. “Paid leave, anti-harassment policies, and affordable child care also are essential to support working women and families.”
In order to achieve this pay equity, we must:
The gender pay gap affects everyone’s life in some way, but it’s not something we have to live with. Closing the gender wage gap is within our power.
Oxfam believes in a more equal world that recognizes all workers for their contributions, where people are paid equitably, regardless of gender, race, or other factors. We advocate for equal pay for equal work to close the gender wage gap.
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Oxfam is a global organization that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice. We offer lifesaving support in times of crisis and advocate for economic justice, gender equality, and climate action. We demand equal rights and equal treatment so that everyone can thrive, not just survive. The future is equal.
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