March 31, 2025 • 9 mins
This year's Equal Pay Day marked another reminder that the gender wage gap is alive and well. We break down some numbers.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I love this stuff. I never told you protection Buyheart
Radio and welcome to what is a bit of a downer.
I'm going to go ahead and tell you of a Monday.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Many with the world the way it is, isn't it always?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I had a handful of topics to choose from, and
I can tell you none of them were great. But
as this comes out, it is the last day of March,
and it is the last day of Women's History Month,
and so we wanted to do a check in on
another piece that happened during this Women's History Month as
(00:49):
we close out, and that's Equal Payday. So if you
don't know, the way equal Payday works is it is
the date that full time women employees have to work
getting with a new year to make up for what
they're largely white male counterparts made in the previous year,
aka the gender wage gap. This year, it fell on
(01:11):
March twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, which is pretty bad,
not good, And as we've talked about in several past episodes,
the gap is worse for women of color. We're talking
like fifty sixty cents in some cases, and it also
gets worse with age, usually due to things like childcare.
(01:31):
So you can look up. We've done a lot of
past episodes on that that you can check out. As
of now, women are still paid on average eighty three
cents to the dollar compared to men in similar positions,
and it's seventy five cents if you include part time workers,
and the World Economic Forum estimates at this rate it
(01:54):
will take one hundred and thirty four years to close
the gap, but others think that that is to mystic
at best. According to the National Women's Law Center, over
the span of a forty year career, a woman entering
the workforce stands to lose about a million dollars due
to this gap, the so called wealth gap. Jasmine Tucker,
(02:18):
the center's vice president of research, said, when you look
at it by race and gender, that disparity is even wider.
This means that women are never ever going to catch up.
Just in a year, a woman is missing out and
estimated fourteen thousand dollars, which could be enough to help
pay for things like childcare. You can look it up
(02:38):
at all the things that fourteen thousand dollars could help cover,
but childcare is a big example, and this data is
from twenty twenty three and includes part time work. Having
to take unpaid parental leave can mean women are missing
out on thousands and thousands of dollars. I was reading
an article about this before, and one of the women
(03:02):
interviewed said she lost about ten thousand dollars. And yes,
many worry that the cuts on DEI will not only
make things worse here in the US, but will make
the disparities easier to hide, especially because you know, we
have all these cuts and the hamstringing of agencies that
(03:22):
are meant to enforce laws around non discrimination and equal pay.
And actually, oh, we laugh because it's terrible. The gender
wage gap got worse between twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three, so it appears for going backwards, and there
are already some pretty pretty dire estimates about what's going
(03:46):
to happen next year. Twenty twenty three research offered the
same theories as to why this gap exists and persist
and has seemingly stalled since the eighties. They were things
that we've talked about BEFO for women pursuing lower paying jobs,
though I would argue many of those jobs are lower
paying because they're viewed as women's work, pregnancy discrimination and
(04:11):
the motherhood penalty, the lack of pay perntal leave COVID.
We talked about that a lot and how bad that
was in plain old systemic bias, and all of this
also impacts retirements and savings. Women aim to save a
way about nine five hundred dollars a year, while men
(04:33):
are looking at almost eighteen thousand, which is a substantial difference. Obviously,
these are averages, but recent studies are indicating that return
to work policies are also disproportionately hurting women too. However,
as discussed previously, working from home does not directly relate
(04:56):
to more pay, but there is a lot of benefit
in terms of the flexibility and childcare, which again though
is extra work that the woman in question is doing.
Typically because we've talked about how a lot of this
kind of domestic care and childcare still falls onto women. Okay,
(05:21):
so that's not good. But there has been movement around
pay transparency laws and paid parental leave, but yes, it
has been slow and inconsistent, and there's been research that
indicates that equal pay is good for both the employee
and to the employer. Since when someone thinks they're being
(05:43):
paid fairly, they stick around longer, and the company avoids
retention costs or like training cost but yeah, it's pretty inconsistent,
and who knows if it'll stick around. Yeah, So that's
that's where we are on Equal Day Day.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
This year.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
There are a lot of statistics that go into much
further death if you're interested, and I do think it's
worth looking it up. And as always when we do
these grim episodes, it's worth reminding ourselves that people are
(06:27):
finding this fight. There are ways that we can fight
this fight as well, and also to keep in mind
that these are averages and there are a lot of
specifics to break down in this conversation, but it is
still it's frustrating because it's kind of going backwards and
it's pretty much been the same since the eighties, and
(06:53):
I'm just I'm kind of tired of like so much
of this work that is so important that women do
being devalued. Right.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I mean, we've had a minute in this conversation about
talking how being a stay at home mom is a
lot of work and no one acknowledges that, and they
have started recently to acknowledge that and seeing that's something
that is worthwhile and should be deemed as important as well.
But also people who are doing the double duty of
(07:21):
being a full time parent as well as a full
time job, how much that that costs for them, and
how much of labor that really is. And it's really
irritating because they have this whole level of like, let's
go back to the women going back home, but they
really don't want women to go back home because they
(07:44):
need them in the workforce and they need those jobs
to be continued, but they just don't want to pay correctly,
and also they don't want to acknowledge that that is
more work. Yeah, but there's so many I mean, there's
so many things that at this point we have to
look at. But it feels like they're doing the most
to take down so much that it's one of the
(08:05):
smaller conversations. Again, like equal pay should be at the
top of the conversation, but it's not anymore. It's more
about like now discrimination in general and whether or not
women have rights in workplaces and marginalized people having rights
in workplaces. So now it's like, oh, dear god, we
have gone back to the seventies sixties in that conversation
(08:26):
instead of coming back to trying to find equal pay.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, like I said, I had a lot of topics
Thatch's from the Monday Mini, but it has to be
a mini. I was trying to make it a minis.
You did it good, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
It is a mini and now we have more to
think on.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yep, we sure do well. Listeners. If you have any
thoughts about this, please let us know. You can email
us at Hello a Stuffannever Told You dot com. You
can find us on blue Sky at on stuff podcast,
or on Instagram and TikTok as stuff one Never Told You.
We're also on YouTube. We have a tea public store,
and we have a book you can get wherever you
get your books. Thanks as always to our super producer Christina,
(09:09):
executive producer, my indo contributor Joey.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Thank you and thanks to you for listening.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Stuff Never Told You, the production of Iyheart Radio. For
more podcast from my Heart Radio, you can check out
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I love this stuff. I never told you protection Buyheart
Radio and welcome to what is a bit of a downer.
I'm going to go ahead and tell you of a Monday.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Many with the world the way it is, isn't it always?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I had a handful of topics to choose from, and
I can tell you none of them were great. But
as this comes out, it is the last day of March,
and it is the last day of Women's History Month,
and so we wanted to do a check in on
another piece that happened during this Women's History Month as
(00:49):
we close out, and that's Equal Payday. So if you
don't know, the way equal Payday works is it is
the date that full time women employees have to work
getting with a new year to make up for what
they're largely white male counterparts made in the previous year,
aka the gender wage gap. This year, it fell on
(01:11):
March twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, which is pretty bad,
not good, And as we've talked about in several past episodes,
the gap is worse for women of color. We're talking
like fifty sixty cents in some cases, and it also
gets worse with age, usually due to things like childcare.
(01:31):
So you can look up. We've done a lot of
past episodes on that that you can check out. As
of now, women are still paid on average eighty three
cents to the dollar compared to men in similar positions,
and it's seventy five cents if you include part time workers,
and the World Economic Forum estimates at this rate it
(01:54):
will take one hundred and thirty four years to close
the gap, but others think that that is to mystic
at best. According to the National Women's Law Center, over
the span of a forty year career, a woman entering
the workforce stands to lose about a million dollars due
to this gap, the so called wealth gap. Jasmine Tucker,
(02:18):
the center's vice president of research, said, when you look
at it by race and gender, that disparity is even wider.
This means that women are never ever going to catch up.
Just in a year, a woman is missing out and
estimated fourteen thousand dollars, which could be enough to help
pay for things like childcare. You can look it up
(02:38):
at all the things that fourteen thousand dollars could help cover,
but childcare is a big example, and this data is
from twenty twenty three and includes part time work. Having
to take unpaid parental leave can mean women are missing
out on thousands and thousands of dollars. I was reading
an article about this before, and one of the women
(03:02):
interviewed said she lost about ten thousand dollars. And yes,
many worry that the cuts on DEI will not only
make things worse here in the US, but will make
the disparities easier to hide, especially because you know, we
have all these cuts and the hamstringing of agencies that
(03:22):
are meant to enforce laws around non discrimination and equal pay.
And actually, oh, we laugh because it's terrible. The gender
wage gap got worse between twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three, so it appears for going backwards, and there
are already some pretty pretty dire estimates about what's going
(03:46):
to happen next year. Twenty twenty three research offered the
same theories as to why this gap exists and persist
and has seemingly stalled since the eighties. They were things
that we've talked about BEFO for women pursuing lower paying jobs,
though I would argue many of those jobs are lower
paying because they're viewed as women's work, pregnancy discrimination and
(04:11):
the motherhood penalty, the lack of pay perntal leave COVID.
We talked about that a lot and how bad that
was in plain old systemic bias, and all of this
also impacts retirements and savings. Women aim to save a
way about nine five hundred dollars a year, while men
(04:33):
are looking at almost eighteen thousand, which is a substantial difference. Obviously,
these are averages, but recent studies are indicating that return
to work policies are also disproportionately hurting women too. However,
as discussed previously, working from home does not directly relate
(04:56):
to more pay, but there is a lot of benefit
in terms of the flexibility and childcare, which again though
is extra work that the woman in question is doing.
Typically because we've talked about how a lot of this
kind of domestic care and childcare still falls onto women. Okay,
(05:21):
so that's not good. But there has been movement around
pay transparency laws and paid parental leave, but yes, it
has been slow and inconsistent, and there's been research that
indicates that equal pay is good for both the employee
and to the employer. Since when someone thinks they're being
(05:43):
paid fairly, they stick around longer, and the company avoids
retention costs or like training cost but yeah, it's pretty inconsistent,
and who knows if it'll stick around. Yeah, So that's
that's where we are on Equal Day Day.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
This year.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
There are a lot of statistics that go into much
further death if you're interested, and I do think it's
worth looking it up. And as always when we do
these grim episodes, it's worth reminding ourselves that people are
(06:27):
finding this fight. There are ways that we can fight
this fight as well, and also to keep in mind
that these are averages and there are a lot of
specifics to break down in this conversation, but it is
still it's frustrating because it's kind of going backwards and
it's pretty much been the same since the eighties, and
(06:53):
I'm just I'm kind of tired of like so much
of this work that is so important that women do
being devalued. Right.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I mean, we've had a minute in this conversation about
talking how being a stay at home mom is a
lot of work and no one acknowledges that, and they
have started recently to acknowledge that and seeing that's something
that is worthwhile and should be deemed as important as well.
But also people who are doing the double duty of
(07:21):
being a full time parent as well as a full
time job, how much that that costs for them, and
how much of labor that really is. And it's really
irritating because they have this whole level of like, let's
go back to the women going back home, but they
really don't want women to go back home because they
(07:44):
need them in the workforce and they need those jobs
to be continued, but they just don't want to pay correctly,
and also they don't want to acknowledge that that is
more work. Yeah, but there's so many I mean, there's
so many things that at this point we have to
look at. But it feels like they're doing the most
to take down so much that it's one of the
(08:05):
smaller conversations. Again, like equal pay should be at the
top of the conversation, but it's not anymore. It's more
about like now discrimination in general and whether or not
women have rights in workplaces and marginalized people having rights
in workplaces. So now it's like, oh, dear god, we
have gone back to the seventies sixties in that conversation
(08:26):
instead of coming back to trying to find equal pay.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, like I said, I had a lot of topics
Thatch's from the Monday Mini, but it has to be
a mini. I was trying to make it a minis.
You did it good, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
It is a mini and now we have more to
think on.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yep, we sure do well. Listeners. If you have any
thoughts about this, please let us know. You can email
us at Hello a Stuffannever Told You dot com. You
can find us on blue Sky at on stuff podcast,
or on Instagram and TikTok as stuff one Never Told You.
We're also on YouTube. We have a tea public store,
and we have a book you can get wherever you
get your books. Thanks as always to our super producer Christina,
(09:09):
executive producer, my indo contributor Joey.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Thank you and thanks to you for listening.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Stuff Never Told You, the production of Iyheart Radio. For
more podcast from my Heart Radio, you can check out
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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