Gender Pay Differences

Women represent an increasingly larger share of the total workforce in the United Statesconstituting nearly half of the total workforce. In addition, an increasing proportion of women in the workforce are more educated. However, research by GAO and others has shown that womens average pay has been and remains lower than that of men. Questions have been raised about the extent to which less-advantaged womenthat is, those who are low wage or less educatedexperience lower wages than less-advantaged men.GAO was asked to examine the differences in representation, key characteristics, and pay among women and men (1) with less education and (2) with low wages. GAO defined less-educated workers as those having a high school degree or less and low-wage workers as those earning an hourly wage rate in the bottom quintileor 20 percentof wages across the workforce. GAO analyzed data from the Department of Labors Current Population Survey (CPS); reviewed other work on similar topics; and interviewed agency officials, representatives of womens groups, and other researchers.