Business The gender pay gap is getting wider, reversing progress

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Men's wages went up last year; women's incomes didn't budge, per new data out Tuesday morning.

Why it matters: It's a worrying sign that the slow march toward pay equity for women is stumbling.
Zoom in: The median woman working full time in 2024 earned 81% of what the median man earned — a drop of 2 percentage points from the year before and the second consecutive annual decline.

  • The pay gap is now back to where it was in 2017, when the burgeoning #MeToo movement drew wide attention to sex discrimination.
By the numbers: Men got raises this year; women did not.
  • The median income for men, working full-time, was $71,090 in 2024, an increase of 3.7%.
  • Women earned $57,520, essentially flat from 2023.

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Between the lines: Wages for workers without a high-school degree were up 5.5% last year — and that may be driving the gap, Katherine Gallagher Robbins, a senior fellow at the National Partnership for Women & Families, tells Axios.
  • Men account for 69% full-time, year-round workers aged 25 and older without a high school degree.
  • "It's great to see men's wages rising, it's critical to make sure women don't fall farther behind, especially as the cost of living has increased," Robbins says.
The big picture: The wage gap doesn't necessarily mean women earn less than men for the same types of jobs.
  • Instead, it is a useful indicator of broad inequality between men and women in the labor market.
Zoom out: Women make up the majority of low-wage workers in the U.S., partly because many are juggling paid work with caring for children. Jobs that can accommodate those schedules tend to pay less.
  • Women are more likely to take career breaks, slowing down wage growth. Plus, jobs typically done by women often pay less than those done by a man. For example, housekeepers typically don't make us much as janitors.
What to watch: There are signs that the labor market for women is worse this year — particularly for Black women who are seeing a spike in unemployment, in the wake of federal layoffs and the DEI crackdown.
  • Hundreds of thousands of mothers also left the workforce in the first half of the year.
  • "At a time when women, including many mothers, are leaving the labor force at record rates, it is a five-alarm fire to see that the gender wage gap is widening for an unprecedented second year in a row," said Emily Martin, chief program officer at the liberal National Women's Law Center.
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It's amazing how women vacillate between being strong, independent girlbosses and wilting lilies to whom life just happens, based on what's convenient in that moment.
 
The people most likely to complain about this are stuck. They acknowledge that it doesn't mean women are being paid less for the same jobs, it means they're likely to work less and also work less demanding jobs. Even the example provided in the article is telling (Housekeeper vs Janitor). Janitors aren't just expected to clean, they're also expected to do light utility/maintenance work (replacing broken lightbulbs) and exist in more tumultuous environments and have access to heavier cleaning tools. Housekeepers mostly work out of hotels and residences, keep them neat and tidy, and maybe do the laundry and organise things. This reductionist view of roles and jobs is similar to the reductionism applied to girl products, hence the similar "Pink tax" myth.

"They should be paid the same. They both clean, don't they?" (Can apply to both shampoo & janitors/housekeepers)
 
You don’t get to gaslight me about how chicks are making millions on
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Then tell me the gap is widening. It’s a gig economy now people, work your side hustle. Sell your fart jars or whatever.
 
The myth of the gender pay gap disappears when you look inside the statistics at what people are paid in the same jobs by gender which is not surprisingly the same.

Its not really a matter of pay gap. Its a matter of people choosing jobs that pay poorly and have no prospects of ever paying better.

The gender pay gap can't ever be "fixed" because the only way to fix it would be to have the government dictate wages for particular jobs.

You make bad choices and you have bad outcomes. Such is life.
 
Aaaaaaand once again, I have to point out that the shit that feminists have been on about, have been gone about the wrong fucking way for decades.

You want equal pay? You can't just walk into a male space and say "I deserve it".

Men earned more money because of generations and generations of building those male spaces, and until women have built their own spaces that have endured, they're simply not instinctively built to do bigger and bolder things the way men have.

And if the wage disparity has stagnated, it's probably because we're in some hard fucking times where women are whining too much about this shit and not spending enough time getting good at shit like men have always understood how, and getting caught up in this intersectional bullshit.

Look around at whatever you have in your place. I guaran-god-damn-tee you didn't think to yourself, "you know, that might have just been a little bit better if more women had participated in its construction, design or marketing". And that's the problem. Women think so highly of themselves that they believe their virtue is in being women.

And the men around them are positively sick of it. They just want to get their work done and they don't want to hear your bitching.

Strix454 said:
The gender pay gap can't ever be "fixed" because the only way to fix it would be to have the government dictate wages for particular jobs.
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Oh man, I can't wait for someone to make that argument at me because I salivate at being able to tell them, beyond the fact that it is literally impossible to enforce at the employee level, that this doesn't mean increased wages for women but depressed wages for everyone.
 
>IMPLYING said:
The people most likely to complain about this are stuck. They acknowledge that it doesn't mean women are being paid less for the same jobs, it means they're likely to work less and also work less demanding jobs. Even the example provided in the article is telling (Housekeeper vs Janitor). Janitors aren't just expected to clean, they're also expected to do light utility/maintenance work (replacing broken lightbulbs) and exist in more tumultuous environments and have access to heavier cleaning tools. Housekeepers mostly work out of hotels and residences, keep them neat and tidy, and maybe do the laundry and organise things. This reductionist view of roles and jobs is similar to the reductionism applied to girl products, hence the similar "Pink tax" myth.

"They should be paid the same. They both clean, don't they?" (Can apply to both shampoo & janitors/housekeepers)
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I've said it outside of this forum for years. You wanna be a girlboss earning millions? Get a trade and become a contractor. A skilled tradie gets 6 figures, healthcare, physical, own truck and phone. Aside from very heavy lifting (which a man shouldn't do either, because it wrecks your body), there is no physical reason a woman can't do any of this work either. OK maybe bricklaying and stonemasonry would be awkward, because you have small hands. But, there are very few limitations. If you get better at your job than most other tradies, you can start your own business and contract them. You'll be worth several millions by the time you're 50. Yes, you'll need to spend about 10 years in crawlspaces terminating cable or whatever.

But no.

I've seen some tradie businesses where the guys would turn up at 5 am and before they hit the road, the bosses wife has bacon, eggs & OJ on the table for them upstairs. That's fine too. You're contributing, the husband pays all your bills, the guys are fed and love your eggs. You don't run a risk of coming in contact with power-lines or being trapped in machinery. Life is wonderful.
 
Blewberry Nausea said:
You don’t get to gaslight me about how chicks are making millions on
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Then tell me the gap is widening. It’s a gig economy now people, work your side hustle. Sell your fart jars or whatever.
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That’s because it’s not “men have more money than women” it’s a very specific phrase of “median income of full time employees” which naturally falls apart if you spend any time thinking about it. These are the same people who cry about businesses misrepresenting how much they make yet have zero problems doing the exact same number fudging to justify their own bullshit.
 
Lol this country is sliding towards economic collapse and race riots and this ugly bitch is still acting like it's 1976 muh pay gap Screenshot_20250909_200856.webp
 
I am amazed that something so thoroughly proven false like the "gender wage gap" is still getting thrown around in Current Year. Women make less because they work fewer hours, avoid overtime, avoid inconvenient shifts, avoid dirty and/or dangerous jobs, miss work more, and stop working at younger ages. The "wage gap" is the embodiment of women's choice, and when women have the choice, they don't want to spend as much time (or any time at all) at some shitty job for money like men do, because their focuses and desires are different than those of men. One would think feminists would be overjoyed by women making their own informed decisions about how to live their lives, free of external pressures, but I always forget that women can only be free to make their own choices so long as they are the ones that feminists say they should make.
 
Fount of BadSpeak said:
One would think feminists would be overjoyed by women making their own informed decisions about how to live their lives, free of external pressures, but I always forget that women can only be free to make their own choices so long as they are the ones that feminists say they should make.
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At the end of the day, feminists want women to be men. They want women to dress like men, they want women to act like men, they want women to not get pregnant, and they want women to sexually want other women. Feminist have always had a horrible case of penis envy; and the worst part is that it is making women's lives worse.
 
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