Trend Shows Unequal Pay Ending in 2068

Women earned just 75 percent of what men earned in 2023, the National Partnership for Women & Families found. The pay gap was even greater for Black, Latina, and other non-white women. For women working full-time and year-round, the gap was “just” 17 percent, with women earning 83 cents for each dollar earned by a male counterpart. The pay disparities were found in more than 90 percent of occupations, Alonzo Martinez writes in Forbes.

From 2022 to 2023, the gender gap in pay actually grew by 3 percent. If the gap in pay continues to close at the rate it did between 2000 and 2023, it will be 2068 before there is pay equity, Amina Khalique reports in American Progress.

Unwilling to wait 43 years for pay equity? 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.

To this end, some states have passed legislation requiring employers to disclose pay information to applicants and employees (see U.S. Department of Labor map). But even in states that legislate pay transparency, the terms and timing vary. By sharing salaries, individual employees can learn information that helps them negotiate or empower co-workers to seek more equitable pay.

While comparative salary data for women across professions is grim, there is a glimmer of hope for female architects. 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. Time will tell whether this is a post-pandemic blip or represents real progress.

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Women’s Rights demonstration in Washington DC, August 1970 (Warren K. Leffler, Library of Congress)