Poll Gauges Perceptions of Equal Pay Between Genders

Last Tuesday, March 12, marked Equal Pay Day in the United States, the date symbolizing how far into the year the average median woman must work in order to earn what the average median man earned the entire previous year.

Some new data from Glassdoor suggests there’s still plenty of progress to be made on the road to equal pay between genders.

Poll results the job search and career community website shared on Equal Pay Day found that 66% of female professionals don’t believe they’re being paid fairly for the work they do. Fifty-nine percent of male professionals said the same.

“For decades, overt workplace biases against women drove much of the gender pay inequity,” read a Glassdoor statement summarizing the survey findings. “Today, the main causes are more subtle.”

Glassdoor pointed to research and data showing that “outright discrimination likely isn’t the main cause of today’s overall gender pay gap,” while noting that discrimination is certainly still present in some cases. Glassdoor cites factors such as an increase of men working in care-oriented roles—sometimes known as pink-collar jobs—that were historically held by women as a bigger driver of the pay gap.

That gap hasn’t closed much in decades. Data from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) finds that women were paid nearly 22% less on average than men in 2023. “While the pay gap declined between 1979 and 1994—due to men’s stagnant wages, not a tremendous increase in women’s wages—it has remained mostly flat since then,” according to EPI.

Pew Research Center data saw American women earning 82 cents for each dollar their male colleagues earned in 2022, representing just a slight increase over 20 years. For example, women earned 80 cents for every dollar their male counterparts took home in 2002, according to Pew.

In analyzing its recent survey results, Glassdoor stressed the importance of increasing pay transparency in the effort to eliminate persistent gender pay disparities.

“One solution to address the gender pay gap may be to promote greater pay transparency,” wrote the Glassdoor team. “This means that everyone can feel empowered to talk about their salaries. Without access to pay data for specific job titles at specific [organizations], gender inequities could persist undetected for years on employer payrolls.”