Why We’re Still Fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment
October 09, 2024
The National Partnership for Women & Families is releasing two important pieces of wage gap research. In the fact sheet America’s Women and the Wage Gap, they dive into the details behind why women are paid 78 cents for every dollar paid to men and what can be done to close this gap, including state-by-state figures.
Their analysis finds that:
- Women employed in the United States lost over $1.6 trillion in 2022 due to the wage gap.
- The gap persists regardless of industry, occupation, and education level, and continues even amongst full-time year-round workers.
- More than 8.4 million of those households – including 2 million with minor children – have incomes that fall below the poverty level. Eliminating the wage gap would provide much-needed income to women whose wages sustain their households.
They also looked at how the wage gap impacted different communities of color in Quantifying America’s Gender Wage Gap by Race/Ethnicity.
- Latinas are typically paid just 52 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men – a decrease from 54 cents in 2021.
- Black women in the United States have a median annual salary of $40,450 – that is $20,380 less than white, non-Hispanic men.
- If the annual wage gap were eliminated for just one year, a typical Native American woman working in the U.S. would have enough money to pay for 31 additional months of child care.
Read more about their wage gap findings here and how the wage gap impacts specific communities here.
In order to close the wage gap once and for all, we must ensure fair pay protections and practices, raise the minimum wage, pass major national investments in paid leave, child care and home- and community-based services, and ensure comprehensive reproductive health care among other policy priorities.
