This guest post is contributed by Maria Rainier, who researches online degrees and blogs at First in Education.
The Beginning of the End of the Traditional Gender Gap
No matter how you add it up, women have been the victims of workplace discrimination, settling for mere fractions of men’s pay, for centuries. They’ve been told that their experience levels and educations were inferior, that their families needed them at home, and that there were no long-term opportunities for female career progress. But here, in the year 2010, women have disproven those so-called facts and shattered the glass ceiling.
- Women now earn more degrees than men (Sheila Scarborough)
From earning just 59% of what men earned 40 years ago, women have started to reverse the gender gap: some earn up to 120% of the average man’s wage. Sure, there are specifics to address and the majority to consider, but it’s still an incredible feat for the number of years that have passed.
Reaching for Success: Emerging Facts and Statistics
Thanks to Reach Advisors, a company that uses factual analysis to identify shifts in the consumer world for innovative businesses, we have some accurate numbers to represent the recent achievements of women in the arenas of wage equality and gender gap reversal. It’s more widespread than you might imagine, especially in large cities: in 147 of 150 of the biggest metropolises in the U.S., women are earning at least 8% more than their male peers. This incredible step of advancement for women is limited, but it’s still significant and serves as an indicator of the future’s potential. While the extreme end of the success spectrum is currently reserved for single women under the age of 30 who have no dependents, these women are forging the way for the rest of the female working population. In Memphis and Atlanta, they’re earning 120% of their male counterparts’ salaries; in New York, 117%; in San Diego, 115%; and in Los Angeles, women make 112% of men’s wages. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the female population catches up.
The Factors Behind the Upset
In general, the trends in U.S. economics that have fed the success of female careers are as follows: a growing knowledge base, the subsequent decline of the manufacturing base, and increasing minority populations. How do these factors work in favor of the ladies? Let’s take a look at the reasons behind their increasingly dominant successes in the workplace.
According to a recent Time interview with James Chung of Reach Advisors, this particular demographic has adapted the best to the changing economy – and now, these young women are reaping their rewards. With women earning the majority of college degrees (58.8% of all degrees in 2010), the increasing number of knowledge-based jobs are going to females. Women are also earning 60.3% of Master’s degrees, 57.4% of Bachelor’s, and 51.6% of Doctorates. And when it comes to the minority populations, Hispanic and African American women are twice as likely to graduate from college as their male counterparts. Higher education is becoming a female-dominated industry, and it’s leading to increased success in the workplace. With the manufacturing base on a declining trajectory, the knowledge base can only continue to grow, feeding new jobs straight into highly educated women’s
hands.
Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education and performs research surrounding online degrees. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.
