Gender pay gap: Women earn nearly 20% less than their male counterparts, study shows

Oct 28, 2021

With the collaboration of Statista.

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There's still a long way to go to close the gender pay gap. Image: UNSPLASH/Go to LinkedIn Sales Solutions's profile LinkedIn Sales Solutions

Katharina Buchholz

Data Journalist, Statista

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Gender Inequality

On average, American working women are paid 82 cents for every dollar that working men make in the US.
On top of gender inequalities, American women are also facing race-related inequalities regarding their income.
Recent statistics highlighting these issues are outlined below.

Latina women in the U.S. had to work all the way through 2020 and well into October 2021 to earn the equivalent of the 2020 wages of white, non-Hispanic U.S. men. October 21 marked Latina Equal Pay Day, the last in a row of equal pay days for different races and ethnicities published by the National Women's Law Center, also comprising Black Women's Equal Pay Day on August 3 and Native American Women's Equal Pay Day on September 8 of 2021. The equal pay day for all U.S. women (compared to all U.S. men) was March 24. This means that on average, American working women are paid 82 cents for every dollar that working men make.

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While Asian-American women outearn the average woman in the U.S., Latinas get paid no more than 55 cents for every dollar white, non-Hispanic men make. This pushes the date of Latina Equal Pay Day almost eight months down the line from the equal pay day for U.S. women overall.

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What's the World Economic Forum doing about the gender gap?

The World Economic Forum has been measuring gender gaps since 2006 in the annual Global Gender Gap Report.

The Global Gender Gap Report tracks progress towards closing gender gaps on a national level. To turn these insights into concrete action and national progress, we have developed the Gender Parity Accelerator model for public private collaboration.

These accelerators have been convened in twelve countries across three regions. Accelerators are established in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico and Panama in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank in Latin America and the Caribbean, Egypt and Jordan in the Middle East and North Africa, and Japan and Kazakhstan in Asia.

All Country Accelerators, along with Knowledge Partner countries demonstrating global leadership in closing gender gaps, are part of a wider ecosystem, the Global Learning Network, that facilitates exchange of insights and experiences through the Forum’s platform.

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In these countries CEOs and ministers are working together in a three-year time frame on policies that help to further close the economic gender gaps in their countries. This includes extended parental leave, subsidized childcare and making recruitment, retention and promotion practices more gender inclusive.

If you are a business in one of the Gender Parity Accelerator countries you can join the local membership base.

If you are a business or government in a country where we currently do not have a Gender Parity Accelerator you can reach out to us to explore opportunities for setting one up.

The methodology for this survey is based on the median annual earnings of full-time, year-round workers irrespective of profession.

a diagram showing a visualization of the gender paygap

There are still many existing inequalities regarding race and gender. Image: Statista

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