Episode 12: What's the gender pay gap in 2024?

Equal Pay Day fell on March 12, 2024 this year. According to the National Women's Law Center, this date represents how many additional days into the year women must work to earn what men did in the previous year in the United States.

Author

Farhan Manjiyani
April 01, 2024

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While we have made good progress with pay transparency and pay gaps like SB 1162 in California which require all job postings to have a salary band (and now 14 states having similar laws passed), there is still significant work to do.

For example, Equal Pay Day fell on March 12, 2024 this year. According to the National Women's Law Center, this date represents how many additional days into the year women must work to earn what men did in the previous year in the United States (72 days if you were wondering).

The gender wage gap continuing to exist means these issues are systemic, so today’s episode is all about getting better educated on the data based on the 2024 Gender Pay Gap Report by Payscale. 8 infuriating facts below:

1️⃣ The gender wage gap has not meaningfully changed in over 10 years. In 2023, it didn’t change at all.

The gender pay gap is shown below as the shaded area between the median pay of women and the median pay of men. If the gender pay gap were to close, the dark blue line would cross the aqua line, at least some of the time. It never has.

2️⃣ When looking at the same roles, women are still paid less

The ‘controllable’ pay gap is specifically looking at the pay gap for men and women with the same job and similar qualifications. Uncontrollable looks at pay gap generally across all jobs.

3️⃣ This problem of different pay with the same qualifications (controlled gap) is consistent across jobs/industries

This list shows the top 20 jobs with the widest gaps where women are paid less despite equal qualifications.

4️⃣ Women still face a ‘motherhood tax’ - i.e. women who are mothers consistently are paid less than their male counterparts who are fathers (with the same qualifications)

Earnings of women without children keep pace with earnings of men without children. This supports research that suggests that having a child or being able to have a child is the primary or true cause of gender pay disparities.

What’s even more mindblowing is that men becoming fathers typically result in a gain 6% of hourly earnings while women becoming mothers result in a loss of 4% of hourly earnings (source).

You can also be married and childless and still be subject to this ‘motherhood tax’ (source).

5️⃣ The income inequity is not due to a lack of education - e.g. women with MBA’s actually have the worst pay equity compared to men with MBA’s.

Women with MBAs take home $0.76 for every dollar that men with MBAs take home. This may be indicative of women struggling to get jobs requiring — and compensating for — an MBA compared to men. Women with law degrees see one of the smaller uncontrolled gender pay gaps at $0.88, as do those with health professional doctorates at $0.89. This year, the gender pay gap does not close for any educational degrees — not even law degrees.

6️⃣ The gender pay gap has decreased for minority women in 2024

Since 2019, the gender pay gap has closed by $0.05 for Black women, by $0.05 for American Indian and Native Alaskan women, by $0.04 for Hispanic women, and by $0.04 for women who are Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander. It has closed by $0.02 for white women and $0.01 for Asian women.

7️⃣ Gender gaps for women of color have been closing faster than white women

While these improvements are encouraging, the gender pay gap has still not closed when data are uncontrolled, and the controlled pay gap needs to be continuously monitored for the narrowing of the pay gap to “stick.” With the labor economy having shifted back in favor of employers and many concerned about a recession, slowed growth, or decreased profits, organizations have been pulling back on investment in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) programs. This could prove detrimental to pay gaps for women of color in future years and may be an issue during this election year.

8️⃣ As women get higher in the organization, the gap widens

Women at the executive level make $0.94 to every dollar a man makes, even when the same job characteristics are controlled for. In the uncontrolled group, women executives make $0.72 to every dollar a male executive makes, which is the same as last year.

 

These are infuriating facts but a helpful grounding exercise. We have more work to do to support each other, become more educated about this data, be more comfortable talking/sharing our numbers with our coworkers, and most of all become better negotiators.

Next week, we will cover tips on how to help overcome these gaps. If this was helpful data for you, consider forwarding to a friend.

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode — good or bad. See ya next week 👋 

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