Gender pay gap

The gender pay gap is the average difference between a man's and a woman's aggregate wages or salaries. This gap is the gap that is left when all other factors are adjusted for. For example, it is expected that someone who takes time off (eg. maternity leave) will not make as much as someone who did not take time off from work. Factors like this contribute to lower yearly earnings for women, but when all external factors have been adjusted for, there still exists a gender pay gap in many situations. In the United States, the average female's unadjusted annual salary has been cited as being 78% of the average male salary. However, multiple studies from OECD, AAUW, and the US Department of Labor have given conflicting data about this statistic. They have arrived at numbers varying from 66% to 82% depending on a wide variety of factors.

The World Economic Forum provides recent data from 2015 that evaluates the gender pay gap in 145 countries. Their evaluations take into account economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment scores.

Looking at the gender pay gap over time, the United States Congress Joint Economic Committee showed that, as explained inequities decrease, the unexplained pay gap remains unchanged. Similarly, according to economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn and their research into the gender pay gap in the United States, a steady convergence between the wages of women and men is not automatic. They argue that after a considerable rise in women's wages during the 1980s, the gain decreased in the 1990s, which was due mainly to a much faster decline in the "unexplained" part of the gap during the 1980s than in the 1990s. They also contend that the slowing of this decline may have been caused by multiple factors, including "changes in labor force selectivity, changes in gender differences in unmeasured characteristics and in labor market discrimination, and changes in the favorableness of demand shifts." A mixed picture of increase and decline characterizes the 2000s. Thus Blau and Kahn assume:

With the evidence suggesting that convergence has slowed in recent years, the possibility arises that the narrowing of the gender pay gap will not continue into the future. Moreover, there is evidence that although discrimination against women in the labor market has declined, some discrimination does still continue to exist.

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