Washington, DC – A new policy brief, The Weekly Gender Wage Gap by Race and Ethnicity: 2020 from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), provides the first data on COVID-19’s impact on the gender wage gap. It finds that the wage gap narrowed, but reasons for the change point to growing inequality instead of progress for women. Women’s average earnings increased more than men’s because lowest paid women were the most likely to lose jobs during the COVID-19 shecession – and are no longer counted in the average women’s weekly median earnings.  As a result of the missing lowest-paid women, the gender wage gap narrowed, between all women and men, and between women and men by race and ethnicity.