3. If women were paid as much as men, poverty among working single mothers would fall by a third or more.
Equal pay isn’t just about fairness—for many women, it’s the difference between being able to provide for their families and not. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) found that if the sexes were paid equally, the poverty rate among women would fall by more than half in 28 states. In all states, poverty among working single mothers would fall by a third or more.
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5. The U.S. wage gap actually widened in 2015.
Over the past year, change in the U.S. wasn’t just slow—it was nonexistent. Another analysis by IWPR showed that in 2015, the ratio of women’s to men’s median weekly full-time earnings was 81.1%—a decrease of 1.4 percentage points since 2014, when the ratio was 82.5%.
