Gender Pay Gap Statistics 2026: A Comprehensive Analysis
In this way, gender plays a mediating role in work discrimination, and women find themselves in positions that do not allow for the same advancements as men. Job choices influenced by socialization are often slotted in to “demand-side” decisions in frameworks of wage discrimination, rather than a result of extant labor market discrimination influencing job choice. It has also been found that career-people of the STEM field with young children face more “work-family” conflict, as the demands of the rigorous STEM field and those of their young children overlap. Flexibility stigma can be defined as the consequences imposed on workers for attempting to balance the responsibilities of their careers and families. While this is true for new mothers, some studies show that both new mothers and fathers report being affected by “flexibility stigma” in the workplace. The researchers also found that the amount of child-related gender inequality has increased significantly over time, from approximately 40 percent in 1980 to 80 percent in 2013.
And while 43% of Republican women say unequal treatment by employers is a major reason for the gender wage gap, just 18% of GOP men share that view. Democratic and Republican women are more likely than their male counterparts in each party to say a major reason for the gender wage gap is that employers treat women differently. When asked about the factors that may play a role in the gender wage gap, half of U.S. adults point to women being treated differently by employers as a major reason, according to an October 2022 Pew Research Center survey. Much of the gender pay gap has been explained by measurable factors such as educational attainment, occupational segregation and work experience.
At the executive level, women earn just $0.69 for every dollar earned by male executives — a notable decline from the prior year. Among workers aged 20 to 29, the uncontrolled gap shows women earning $0.86 per male dollar. The world’s first trillionaire used a rigged tax code, http://green-dom.info/page/91/?1483992611_3713 government support, and unchecked political influence to extract and protect his own wealth.
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On the other hand, the State Services Commission uses the average income of men and women in its calculations. However, researchers claim that 80 percent of these factors cannot be elucidated, which often causes difficulty in understanding the gap. North Korea, on the other hand, is one of the few countries where women earn more than men. Young women earn more than men until age 30; this is mostly due to higher levels of education. Without adjustments, the gap is 20% for businesses (2014) and 10% for the government (2014). Adjusted for occupation level, education level, experience level, and 17 other variables, the earnings gap between businesses and government has narrowed from 9% (2008) to 7% (2014) in businesses and from 7% (2008) to 5% (2014) in government.
The gender pay gap widened in 2026
In 2026, we estimated the lifetime earnings lost due to the gender pay gap. It was March 12 in 2024, representing a widening of the gender pay gap in recent years despite the expansion of pay transparency legislation, which has been shown to close pay gaps. The median salary for men is higher than the median salary for women and has been since Payscale started tracking the gender pay gap. Payscale can help employers monitor the controlled and uncontrolled pay gap in their organizations.
Moreover, the World Economic Forum provides data from 2015 that evaluates the gender pay gap in 145 countries. For ages below 25, negative gender pay gaps were observed in Belgium (-8.3%), Greece (-4.4%), France (-7.2%), Malta (-2.0%) and Finland (-0.5%) for 2023, while for ages 25–34 negative gender pay gaps were observed in Belgium (-5.0) and Malta (-4.3%). In Luxembourg, a negative gender pay gap in unadjusted gross hourly earnings was observed at -0.9% in 2023, which indicates that, on average, women are paid more for each hour of work compared to men.
Occupational segregation
But when all workers are considered — including part-time and part-year employees — the gender pay gap is wider. The gender pay gap affects everyone’s life in some way, but it’s not something we have to live with. The racial pay gap is intrinsically connected to the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap is the difference in earnings between women and men. In this explainer, we take a look at why the gender pay gap exists and what you can help do about it.
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- Other studies have found direct evidence of discrimination – for example, more jobs went to women when the applicant’s sex was unknown during the hiring process than when it was known.
- Occupations with low female representation — Protective Service (25% women), Transportation & Material Moving (22% women), and Installation, Maintenance & Repair (5% women) — show the widest controlled gender pay gaps.
- She advocated educational reforms to address the remaining gender pay gap rather than mandates on business, arguing that the latter is too difficult to implement given the demands of the current business environment.
- Data show that employees with caregiving responsibilities — disproportionately women — face different career outcomes than those without such responsibilities.
- However, researchers claim that 80 percent of these factors cannot be elucidated, which often causes difficulty in understanding the gap.
- The study concludes the “gig” economy can perpetuate the gender pay gap even in the absence of discrimination.
Comprehensive analyses are commonly conducted at least annually as part of regular compensation planning, and many organizations also perform quarterly or semi-annual checks to stay ahead of emerging issues. A growing best practice https://homeinharmonia.com/navigating-the-latest-small-business-regulations/ is to leverage compensation software to monitor pay equity continuously — with every hire, pay raise, promotion, or organizational change — so that potential disparities are caught before they widen. Illegal pay gaps occur when differences are driven by protected characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, disability, or retaliation. Equal pay refers to paying employees the same for performing the same job or substantially similar work, regardless of gender or other protected characteristics. Research suggests that evaluation language and criteria can vary, and standardized, objective criteria help ensure performance assessments are based on job-related factors.
The Glass Ceiling model is a systemic form of gender discrimination utilized to uphold the gender pay gap by barring women from higher-level and higher-paying roles due to occupational bias and gender-based wages. This matters when it comes to the topic of gender pay gap because female-dominated fields pay less on average, and this affects the wage gap. However, these benefits are only required of employers with more than 50 employees. This reinforces the pay gap between males and females in the labor market, and now people are trapped in this self-reinforcing cycle. This significantly impacts their professional careers by delaying women’s promotions and other hiring opportunities. Although the gender pay gap has indeed narrowed, this phenomenon is essentially only significant for childless men and women.
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- 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.
- Pay transparency is raising expectations for how organizations explain pay decisions, but transparency itself is not the challenge.
- By the time they reach executive level status, the controlled gender pay gap widens for women to $0.92 on the dollar.
- They also argued that the gender wage difference will decline modestly and that the extent of discrimination against women in the labor market seems to be decreasing.
- The uncontrolled gender pay gap persists at all levels and has gotten worse for women in the highest positions with an uncontrolled pay gap of $0.69 for female executives (compared to $0.72 last year).
Sexual harassment creates costs to the victim and to the company as economic models show that harassment lowers wages, creates losses due to turnovers and legal costs, and shapes the labor market as a whole by segregating which gender can work in a specific sector. A Morningstar analysis of senior executive pay data revealed that senior executive women earned 84.6 cents for every dollar earned by male executives in 2019. A 2022 study by Folbre et al. illustrates how the concentration of women in care occupations contributes significantly to the gender pay gap. Gender-specific factors, including gender differences in qualifications and discrimination, overall wage structure, and the differences in remuneration across industry sectors all influence the gender pay gap. Some variables that help explain the non-adjusted gender pay gap include economic activity, working time, and job tenure. The gender pay gap can, for example, be measured by ethnicity, by city, by job, or within a single organization.
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. 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. This was seen as a victory for those fighting against the gender wage gap, because if a woman at the end of her career found that she had been making less money than men who were doing the same work, she now had more than six months from the date of her last pay check to file a claim and possibly receive the wages that were denied. The Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made all sex discrimination in covered workplaces illegal (with exceptions), and this coverage was expanded to the basis of pregnancy by the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act.citation needed However, a 2018 study analyzing the pay gap of Uber drivers showed that men earned 7% more than women in a context where salaries were not negotiated. Some studies of simulated salary negotiations have found that men on average negotiated more aggressively than women.