A new study says working women earn 49 cents for every dollar earned by a man, a claim that challenges most research that says women earn 80% of what men are paid on average across all industries.
The report was produced by The Institute for Women’s Policy Research and authored by Stephen J. Rose and Heidi Hartmann. The authors examined earnings over a 15-year period between 2001 and 2015 and concluded that women are penalized for taking time away from the labor force.
When measured by total earnings across the 15-year period for all employees who worked in at least one year, women workers’ earnings were 49% — less than half — of men’s earnings, a wage gap of 51% in 2015.
The study’s figures are also different from others because they are calculated with the inclusion of what women lose in pay when they take a year off from work. Pay for women who took at least a year off between 2001 and 2015 was 39% lower than for those who worked all 15 of those years, the study says.
