We were already mad about the gender pay gap. Have been as long as we’ve been aware of it. But this makes us furious all over again: The gender pay gap between men and women working full time is at its widest for those over 50, according to a recent research.
And some researchers can get even more specific. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, a program of the Minnesota Population Center found that the gender gap is widest at ages 57 and 58. At both of those ages, the median full-time, year-round male worker had a total income of $62,000 in 2017 (most recent figures available), while the median full-time, year-round female worker had a total income of $46,000, or a 25 percent wage gap compared to the median male income.
This means that as we gain knowledge and wisdom, we are appreciated even less– less than men and less than ever. That should burn up any working woman.
Read More: Retired Women Are Worse Off Financially Than Men. (Grrrrr!) Here’s Why and How to Fix
Gender Wage Gap: Bigger As You Go Higher
Both women and men reach their peak earnings during their 40s, according to the Rest Less analysis, with women taking home an annual salary that was 19 percent, almost one-fifth less than men. That’s bad enough, but it just heads south from there.
“In looking at the career progression for women holistically, it’s clear that the gender pay gap widens as women ratchet up the corporate ladder, creating an even greater deficit in possible lifetime earnings at higher salaries than the median,” says a report from PayScale, a business software company.
This gap has wider implications since this is the age that we’re considering retirement. “Women in their 50s and 60s face the double discrimination of age bias, combined with the widest gender pay gap of all ages,” says Stuart Lewis, founder of Rest Less, a digital community for people over 50 in the U.K. “Decades of a gender pay gap and the resulting wide gulf in private pension savings mean that the future retirement incomes of men and women remain far from equal.”
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