Families Can’t Afford the Gender Wage Gap

Women’s earnings are increasingly critical to their families’ financial stability. Women edged up to 50 percent of workers on U.S. payrolls for the first time in October 2009, and two-thirds of American families with children now rely on a woman’s earnings for a significant portion of their family’s income. Yet women continue to face a career wage gap that sets them back hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout their lives.

The report reviews shifts in women’s economic role, particularly as related to family income. More than 6 in 10 families with children in 42 states rely on a woman to serve as breadwinner or co-breadwinner. Full-time, full-year working women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. This wage gap is even larger for women of color. African-American women earn 61 cents and Latinas earn 52 cents for every dollar a white non-Hispanic man earns. The gap causes the typical woman to lose $431,000 in pay over a 40-year career.

The authors argue that the gender pay gap has taken on added importance as men have been more likely than women to lose jobs under the recession. The persistent gender pay gap is adding insult to injury for the millions of families now relying on a woman’s job to make ends meet.

Read the report.