Women’s issues beyond the pay gap

The pay gap is just one statistic, however, and analyzes data from the entire workforce rather than looking at gender pay disparities by industry, said Jeff Hayes, a researcher who specializes in gender pay gaps at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. He points to occupational segregation, which measures to what degree men and women are working in different occupations, as another statistic that should be examined.

Engineering and other occupations dominated by men tend to pay well, for example, while female-dominant occupations like social work and education tend to have lower average earnings, which can be a factor in the persistence of the wage gap.