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If the 10 occupations with the most women workers paid the same average wages as the top 10 fields for employing men, about 12 million women might’ve taken home an extra $96 billion in 2021, according to a new report from the National Partnership for Women & Families.
“Women’s work has been undervalued for generations solely based on the fact that they are primary caregivers in many families, and these new findings make it clear where the divisions lie in terms of pay and opportunity,” Jocelyn Frye, the nonprofit advocacy group’s president, said in a statement about the report Monday.
The report was released just before Equal Pay Day on Tuesday, March 14 — a symbolic date representing when women’s earnings finally catch up to men’s average earnings for the previous year — to highlight how women are overrepresented in lower-paying jobs, with women of color and women with disabilities among the most impacted by the disparity.
The authors recommended that policymakers work to ensure women are better represented in higher-paying jobs moving forward, especially as the country implements programs within the bipartisan infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, among other measures. Women were typically paid 77 cents for each dollar men earned in 2021, the report added, citing the organization’s analysis of Census Bureau data.
“The infrastructure investments made by the Biden administration have created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to increase women’s share of higher-paying construction and manufacturing jobs which will not only support our economy but also help close the wage gap,” Frye said in her statement.
Related: Equal Pay Day: U.S. gender pay gap barely budged over the past 20 years. Why not?
The occupations featuring the most men, according to the report, include truck drivers and sales workers; managers, first-line supervisors of retail-sales workers; laborers and freight, stock, and hand material movers; janitors; software developers; construction workers; sales representatives; cooks; and retail salespeople. The approximately 12 million men working in those fields make an average of $56,500.
Occupations employing the most women, meanwhile, include registered nurses; elementary and middle-school teachers; secretaries and administrative assistants; customer-service workers; managers; first-line supervisors of retail-sales workers; accountants and auditors; nursing assistants; office clerks; and cashiers. And the approximately 12 million women working in those fields make an average of $48,500.
All the while, “women still continue to do the majority of unpaid family caregiving,” the report said. “And the United States lacks adequate caregiving policies providing paid family and medical leave, access to high-quality, affordable child care, home- and community-based service or paid sick leave.”
Women of color are particularly overrepresented in the lowest-paid occupations, the report showed, with Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women making up about 58% of manicurists and pedicurists, Latinas comprising 45% of the workers who grade and sort agricultural products, and Black women representing about a third of all nursing assistants.
These gender and racial disparities in job representation, known as occupational segregation, are “not an accident,” the report said. “Starting long before the United States was founded and continuing into the present day, racism, sexism and ableism have shaped the basic structure of our economy, our laws and policies, and the day-to-day culture of workplaces,” the authors wrote.
The jobs with the highest median wages — often relating to the medical and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields — are also largely held by men, the report said. Only 19% of surgeons are women, for example.
“At the same time, women make up close to two-thirds (63.6 percent) of workers in the 20 occupations with the lowest median wages for full-time, year-round workers,” the report said. “More than 5.7 million people are employed in these occupations, many of which are public-facing service-sector jobs.”
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