The headline news from a new Pew Research Center report is that younger women are out-earning men in some places. But the vast majority of women face a very different reality, the analysis of Census Bureau data shows.
Women under 30 are paid at least as much as men under 30 in 22 metropolitan areas, a major advance for pay equality. But that’s 22 metropolitan areas out of 250, home to just 16% of young women working full time—and the story for women over 30 is different.
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In the New York City and Washington, D.C., metro areas, “young women earn 102% of what young men earn when examining median annual earnings among full-time, year-round workers,“ Pew reports. In the Los Angeles area, median earnings for the two groups are identical.
In 107 metro areas, young women are paid between 90% and 99% of what young men are paid, and 47% of young women live in those areas. Regionally, the gender earnings gap among young workers is largest in the Midwest, where young women make just 90% of what young men make. Considering that for women of all ages who work full time and year-round median earnings are just 82% of what men make, all of this suggests progress.
But. “As these women age, history suggests that they may not maintain this level of parity with their male counterparts,” Pew notes. “For example, in 2000, the typical woman age 16 to 29 working full time, year-round earned 88% of a similar young man. By 2019, when people in this group were between the ages of 35 and 48, women were earning only 80% of their male peers, on average.”
Scholars cite several reasons for that. Richard Fry, the Pew researcher who authored the report, suggests that pattern is “consistent with a finding that labor economists have well documented — that women suffer a penalty when they become a mom.”
”The older a woman is, the more time she has had to have been passed up for a promotion, to have gotten a slighter smaller raise compared to an equivalent male colleague, or to have made a career sacrifice for her family,” Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, told The Washington Post. What happens inside companies—outright discrimination, subtle differences in mentoring or training opportunities, assumptions about the ambitions of women who become mothers—matters, but so do the pressures women’s families put on them, a phenomenon that has been massively consequential during the coronavirus pandemic.
Signs of change are what make for zippy headlines. But the real story of this study, despite those 22 metro areas where one group of women makes what one group of men does, is how far we have to go.
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Women under 30 are paid at least as much as men under 30 in 22 metropolitan areas, a major advance for pay equality. But that’s 22 metropolitan areas out of 250, home to just 16% of young women working full time—and the story for women over 30 is different.
RELATED STORY: Good news: It's the earliest Equal Pay Day ever. Bad news: Women are still screwed in this country
In the New York City and Washington, D.C., metro areas, “young women earn 102% of what young men earn when examining median annual earnings among full-time, year-round workers,“ Pew reports. In the Los Angeles area, median earnings for the two groups are identical.
In 107 metro areas, young women are paid between 90% and 99% of what young men are paid, and 47% of young women live in those areas. Regionally, the gender earnings gap among young workers is largest in the Midwest, where young women make just 90% of what young men make. Considering that for women of all ages who work full time and year-round median earnings are just 82% of what men make, all of this suggests progress.
But. “As these women age, history suggests that they may not maintain this level of parity with their male counterparts,” Pew notes. “For example, in 2000, the typical woman age 16 to 29 working full time, year-round earned 88% of a similar young man. By 2019, when people in this group were between the ages of 35 and 48, women were earning only 80% of their male peers, on average.”
Scholars cite several reasons for that. Richard Fry, the Pew researcher who authored the report, suggests that pattern is “consistent with a finding that labor economists have well documented — that women suffer a penalty when they become a mom.”
”The older a woman is, the more time she has had to have been passed up for a promotion, to have gotten a slighter smaller raise compared to an equivalent male colleague, or to have made a career sacrifice for her family,” Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, told The Washington Post. What happens inside companies—outright discrimination, subtle differences in mentoring or training opportunities, assumptions about the ambitions of women who become mothers—matters, but so do the pressures women’s families put on them, a phenomenon that has been massively consequential during the coronavirus pandemic.
Signs of change are what make for zippy headlines. But the real story of this study, despite those 22 metro areas where one group of women makes what one group of men does, is how far we have to go.
RELATED STORIES:
'It's a really proud moment': U.S. women's soccer players win historic equal pay settlement
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