04-03-2025
Equal Pay Day in 2025 was March 25. This date represents the additional days female workers must work to earn the same amount their male counterparts earned in the 2024 calendar year. While women continue to complete increasing levels of education and earn senior leadership positions at work, the pay and promotion gaps have not narrowed.
For two decades, women earned just 83 cents for every dollar earned by men (National Women’s Law Center). However, that gap widened a bit from 2022 to 2023. The gap is more significant for women of color and grows as women age. Female workers have the smallest gender wage gap when they begin their careers out of high school or college. However, women’s caregiving duties expand as they get older because they take care of children and other family members. Once a woman takes a break to care for a family member, it becomes hard to catch up with her peers. This gap happens across many industries, irrespective of educational background. Remote work opportunities have made it easier for women to care for their families but have not improved pay equity. Payscale found that the wage gap is wider for women who work from home.
Over the course of their careers, women will lose $462,000 compared with men’s incomes. If you dive deeper into the numbers, breaking them down by race and gender, that disparity grows. Black women, Latinas, Indigenous women, and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander women will lose more than 1 million dollars over a 40-year career, as compared to white, non-Hispanic men. Women cannot catch up. The World Economic Forum predicts that it could take 134 years for women to reach full parity. Policies like paid parental leave and pay transparency laws can help.