The Gender Wage Gap is Closing
But only for women in this group
If you have been waiting for the wage gap to close, The World Economic Forum has an answer. Our highly evolved civilization will have fully solved this thorny problem in 257 years. In 2017, the wage gap was on target to close in 217 years, but the pandemic has revised that prediction.
Yes, that is right. We are going in the wrong direction.
Currently, American women make 82% of what men earn. But to understand the wage gap, we first must understand how we got that number. The wage gap aggregates ALL men’s and women’s wages to get a median. But that average does not tell the full story.
What is NOT closing the wage gap
Some people deny the wage gap exists, and these arguments further hamstring our ability to close it.
The first wage gap denial argument goes like this; more women work in lower-paying jobs than men, thereby skewing the gap. For example, if more hairdressers are women than neurosurgeons, then that job discrepancy bends the percentages.
But that gap exists within professions too and is larger in some professions. In 2018, the wage gap for accountants was 78%. For nurses, it was 92%. And for lawyers, it was a staggering 58%.
