Trend Shows Unequal Pay Ending in 2088
Women have been advocating for equal pay for equal work since at least the 19th century but are still decades away from achieving it. If the pace of change since 2000 continues, it will be 2088 before women attain wage equality with men, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families. This is twenty years longer than projected last year.
Women working full-time and year-round earned 83 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024, according to the US Census. Across all jobs and hours worked, women earned an average of 76 percent of what men did in 2024. Non-white women earned lower percentages. “On average, women employed in the United States lose a combined total of over $1.9 trillion every year due to the wage gap,” the National Partnership for Women & Families found. This disadvantages women—more than 36 million of whom are heads of households—and the children and others who depend on them.
In 1888, when less than one percent of architects in the U.S. were female, Louise Blanchard Bethune (1856 – 1913) had her own architecture firm and demanded equal pay for her work. “The open sesame to the favor of our compeers and the respect of the public is ‘Equal remuneration for Equal Service,’ and a strict observance of all the honorable traditions of our profession and its amenities of practice,” Bethune said in an 1891 speech.
Architects and business partners Mary Nevan Gannon (1867 – 1932) and Alice J. Hands (1874 – 1971) also insisted on equal fees. “A point upon which we are determined is that we will not cut rates,” Gannon told one publication in 1896. “The cheapening in all the departments of work undertaken by women is deplorable…”
More recently, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2023 the salaries of “Architects, except landscape and naval,” rose to 89.3 percent of male architects’ salaries, up from 78.5 percent in 2022. The federal government has not shared 2024 data on pay by gender and occupation, so it is impossible to know if this rise in 2023 was a post-pandemic blip or actual progress for the profession.
.jpg){kind=link}
It is frustrating that, after more than 130 years of advocacy for equal pay and over 60 years after the passage of federal laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, working women are still at an economic disadvantage. While the responsibility for fair pay lies with employers, employees can help themselves (and each other) by working toward pay transparency. The goal of pay transparency is to provide information that will empower women (and Black, Latina, and Indigenous people of all genders) to negotiate more equitable pay. By sharing salaries, individual employees can learn information that helps them negotiate or empower co-workers to seek more equitable pay.
Please subscribe to The Architectress.