10 Wildly Depressing Facts About the Gender Wage Gap

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/155016/10_wildly_depressing_facts_about_the_gender_wage_gap/

Equal Pay Day is April 17. This date symbolizes how far into 2012 the average woman must work to earn what the average man earned in 2011. While the wage gap has certainly narrowed with the past generation of working women—in 1967 women only earned about 28 cents to a man’s dollar—progress has stalled in recent years. If progress continues at its current rate, it will take 45 years to eradicate the wage gap.

Given the unfortunate fact that the gender wage gap appears to be here for a while, here are the top 10 facts you need to know about unequal pay:

1. In 2010 women who worked full time, year round, still only earned 77 percent of what men earned. The median earnings for women were $36,931 compared to $47,715 for men, and neither real median earnings nor the female-to-male earnings ratio have increased since 2009.

2. The gender wage gap does not only affect individuals—entire families are impacted by women’s earnings. In 2010, in nearly two-thirds of families (63.9 percent), a mother was either the breadwinner—either a single working mother or bringing home as much or more than her husband—or a co-breadwinner—bringing home at least a quarter of the family’s earnings. When women’s wages are lowered due to gender discrimination, their families’ incomes are often significantly lowered as well.

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. 11) for equally experienced people who work the same hours in the same jobs, it's nonexistent.

12) Equal Workplace fatality day should be sometime in December. 92% of people killed on the job are men.

Traditional men's careers are unsafe. Consequently, those jobs pay more. Men take these jobs because the burden of family breadwinning is placed on them, by both social expectation and family court.

[One_Life_To_Give]

2. Female Engineers fall behind within 1-3yrs

They hire in at the same wage. But average performance evaluation and merit increases are not equal. We have corrected a handfull of reasons why women's wages are low. But we also know that Blonde men earn more than Brown haired men. Taller, more handsome men earn more etc. There are alot of unknowns when it comes to why the disparity in results.