Women Make Up More Than Half the Workforce, so Paid Parental Leave and Equal Pay Are More Urgent Than Ever

By Anthony P. Carnevale and Nicole Smith

You may have seen the headlines: women recently outnumbered men in the workforce for the first time since the Great Recovery. In December, women held 50.04 percent of jobs, surpassing men by 109,000 jobs. This a notable moment for women in the US workforce, and we can expect this trend to continue.

Higher numbers of college-educated women in the labor force doesn’t mean that men are losing jobs. There is no upper limit on the growth of well-paying jobs for college graduates like there was when men were losing jobs in manufacturing and construction 10 years ago. This time, women outnumber men because women are gaining jobs as new jobs are being added in education and health services, fields in which women are highly concentrated.

While women’s growing participation in the workforce is a step toward equity, don’t let the 50–50 split fool you. Workers with higher levels of education tend to participate in the workforce at higher rates, and women’s educational attainment has outpaced men’s for decades. So, at this point, it comes as no surprise that women comprise more than half the labor force.

However, women’s labor force participation in the US still lags that of many OECD countries, which mandate more generous support for working mothers. The United States is the only one out of 41 countries that does not require paid maternity leave. The other 40 countries mandate at least two months’ paid leave for new mothers, and 34 of the countries also require paid leave for new fathers, which could make it easier for women to continue working.

With just 12 weeks of unpaid leave for new mothers in the US, and the bulk of familial responsibility still falling on women, many women in America leave the workforce entirely, or work only part-time, so they can take care of their children. When women with children do work, they often must make the hard decision to leave higher-paying jobs with good benefits for lower-paying jobs with more flexible hours.

But leaving higher-paying jobs has a cost — and it’s reflected in women’s paychecks. In 2016, women earned 81 cents for every dollar earned by a man. The wage gap is even wider for Black and Latina women, who earned 62 cents and 52 cents, respectively, for every dollar earned by a White man. The gender wage gap can be partly accounted for by the fact that women are concentrated in majors that lead to lower-paying jobs, such as education and psychology. Even so, women earn just 92 cents for every dollar earned by men who have the same college majors and work in the same careers as they do. This remaining, unexplained portion of the gender wage gap indicates that women may experience discrimination in the workplace.

For women, these disparities in pay can amount to a loss of about $1 million over the course of a career. The reality is that a woman needs one more academic degree to have the same earnings as a man. Women’s pay matters not just for women, but for their families, too. Women were the sole or primary breadwinners in 41 percent of US households with children in 2017, and another 23 percent of mothers contributed 25 percent or more of their household earnings.

Despite slightly outnumbering men at work, women aren’t reaping the benefits that should accompany their exceptional educational achievements. It’s long past time to pave the way for more women to work — and to earn equal pay for their work — by supporting women in the labor force.

Dr. Carnevale is Director and Research Professor and Nicole Smith is Chief Economist and Research Professor at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. CEW is an independent, nonprofit research and policy institute affiliated with the Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy that studies the link between education, career qualifications, and workforce demands.

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