The Worst States For Gender Income Inequality: Report

Despite a recent uptick in women entering the workplace, female workers continue to earn less than their male counterparts and a new report shows where women fall furthest behind.

New analysis from Slate based on the Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey shows that the gap between what men and women earn is the worst in Utah, where the average working woman making only 55 cents for every dollar the average man makes.

Even in the best states for income inequality -- North Carolina, Maryland, Florida, Nevada and Hawaii -- women still only make about 75 percent of what their male counterparts make.

Gender aside, income inequality is plaguing the country with the gap between the richest and poorest Americans increasing nationwide. Nebraska, New Mexico and West Virginia toped the list of states where income inequality is growing fastest.

Despite Slate's findings, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that when education and work benefits are considered, gender income equality may not be as stark. In fact, the pay gap between men and women has been shrinking for decades and hit a historic low in 2011, down 30 percent from 1989.

Where does your state stand on the gender wage gap scale? Here are the worst states for female earners.

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• Massachusetts

  68 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man.

• Maine

  68 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Oregon

  68 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Nebraska

  68 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Minnesota

  68 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Kentucky

  68 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Mississippi

  67 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Iowa

  67 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Illinois

  66 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Kansas

  66 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Alabama

  66 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Oklahoma

  66 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Connecticut

  66 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Pennsylvania

  66 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Ohio

  66 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• New Hampshire

  65 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Washington

  65 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Indiana

  64 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Montana

  64 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• West Virginia

  63 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Idaho

  62 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Michigan

  62 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• North Dakota

  62 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Louisiana

  59 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Wyoming

  56 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

• Utah

  55 cents made by average woman per dollar made by average man

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Comments

[RedStateGoodState]

06:17 PM on 02/03/2013

I am sick of all these woman whining about pay inequality.
Who can afford to hire someone that may need to leave their job for more
than a week.

First off, women are biologically different than men, a.k.a
UTERUS!!!!!! If we weren’t supposed to take care of the children, why
would God give them to us (don’t even get me started on Lesbians). Our
bodies are designed for childcare, while men’s big muscles are designed
for work. Additionally, men’s brains are more mathematical in nature,
allowing the calculus of logic to overtake emotion. Could you imagine
what would happen if women designed spaceships for NASA? What kind of
propellant would they use, love and good feelings? As you can see,
feminism is a scientifically inaccurate ideology.
God's book c-l-e-a-r-l-y states that the women is the man’s slave. Why would a
slave make more than the master? You don’t like it… to bad. That’s what
the bible says. You HAVE to live by it if you don’t want to end up you
know where. Now I’ll admit, it can get confusing. For example, my
fiance, who is my master, tells me to have sex with him even though the
Bible says that you MUST wait until your marraige. I don’t like
violating my principals, but I’m not in charge here. Now, some may say
that’s unfair, but really, it comes down to productivity. My boyfriends
bigger muscles and brain make him more productive.

[DZR]

10:45 AM on 10/29/2012

Aside from the fact that all the stay-at-home moms would of course skew the averaged results, I'd much more be interested in what a woman makes for doing *the same job* with the *same experience* as her male counterpart.

[Malebmw]

08:02 PM on 10/24/2012

The only statistics I know about the differences between men and women in the work place is my own experience. Personally, I have had 13 male bosses and 8 female bosses throughout my career. 3 males were fired for incompetence while 6 females were terminated for the same thing, and 1 left on maternity leave. Only 1 female that was my boss ever made it a nice environement. She was an african american as well. Miss Connie was the best!

[monicawharton]

06:17 PM on 10/24/2012

Women are still underpaid for same jobs that men do.. especially in Academia where the good old boys run the show at the top and women have to fight for research funding, pay equity, etc. In Florida it has been my experience that businesses still do not pay women the same as men for same jobs... and discrimination still exists here.

[Durrrrrr]

08:03 AM on 10/25/2012

"underpaid for same jobs"

Do provide your source. Because the statistics pandered by HuffPo do not control for the heterogeneous distribution of male and female workers across industries.

[Jack Davies]

05:44 PM on 10/28/2012

Oh Durr, that is NOT a direction you want to take this convo, what with us guys being outnumbered by women....

[Zalkreb]

03:09 PM on 10/24/2012

What a 2009 Labor Department study of the wage gap found:

“Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.”
An Analysis of Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women, U.S. Department of Labor, 2009
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf”

[NWOslave]

01:09 PM on 10/24/2012

Since were taking the wage of men and women working in every position and dividing that number by the number of men and women to determine the level of sexism per state. the company I work for is the most sexist comapny in the world. Three women work as secretaries and about 40 men work as laborers. It's hard, dirty work. The women make about 24k a year and the men make about 36k a year. Lets figure out the level of sexism at my company.

24k x 3 = 72k a year. 36k x 40 = 1440k a year. 1440/72 = 20. Which means at my company women get only 20 cents per dollar overall. In order to equalize out the pay each woman needs to get 480k a year. Best call the Lilly Ledbetter police, sexism is rampant at my company.

[glendadover]

01:59 PM on 10/24/2012

The pay scale is based on same work same pay. Laborers always make more. If there was women as laborers they to would get 36k a year.

[BigWillyG]

07:49 PM on 10/24/2012

I believe NOWslave is being sarcastic to point out the flaws in how "inequality" was figured out in this report.

[TheSecularist]

02:31 PM on 10/24/2012

You're comparing apples to oranges and your math is wrong in any case. First, the computations were based on averages, in this case 24k avg vs. 36k average. Second, you'd invert the calculation you did: 24/36=67cents for every dollar earned by men. Using your numbers (totals instead of averages), it would yield women earning 5 cents for every dollar earned by men (comparing different jobs), not 20 cents.

[NWOslave]

02:40 PM on 10/24/2012

I used the same equation the report used. They took the total wages of men and women and divided it by the number of working men and women. I did the same for my company.

[MontyBurnsEsq]

01:07 PM on 10/24/2012

Majority are Northern liberal states.

[Jack Davies]

05:45 PM on 10/28/2012

Good point!

[MissTake1989]

09:52 AM on 10/24/2012

It's so obvious that Gender Studies degrees do not require any economics classes as prerequisites.

[nfatt1]

09:25 AM on 10/24/2012

Is Bain is in the " Binder Full of thieves ". ?

[airmailpilot]

09:04 AM on 10/24/2012

Is a bad math story, example is Louisiana where the men work oil rigs and women work at the waffle house, men make the most? duh

[angusmciver]

11:23 AM on 10/24/2012

you have a small brain don't you? You are talking apples and oranges. They're talking apples and apples.

[oilfield]

12:07 PM on 10/24/2012

these studies never cite apples to apples

[MissTake1989]

06:47 AM on 10/25/2012

That's what they "talk" but not what they compare.

[Durrrrrr]

12:11 PM on 10/24/2012

As I said below, Libs/Progs cannot comprehend confounding factors. See exhibit 1) angusmciver whose IQ is roughly the product of all the numbers in a matrix in reduced row echelon form (of course with an IQ that low angusmciver doesn't know what I just said).

[Durrrrrr]

07:09 AM on 10/24/2012

Amazing that men even have jobs if all businesses had to do was replace them with women of equal competence and reduce personnel expenses by 30%.

Apparently 'confounding factors' is too wonkish a term for Libs/Progs to comprehend. I can't wait until Libs/Progs start complaining that high-school dropouts earn 55 cents for every dollar a college graduate earns.

[Mullet Reeve]

09:02 AM on 10/24/2012

To which confounding factors do you refer, and in reference to which jobs?

Considering that more "Libs/Progs" have college degrees than "Con/Victs", I'm pretty sure most of them won't struggle to understand the phrase 'confounding factors', and will see through you're impotent attempt to deflect the point of this article.

[Durrrrrr]

11:41 AM on 10/24/2012

"To which confounding factors do you refer"
Try reading the St. Louis Fed paper that is linked to.

[spgsaab]

05:50 AM on 10/24/2012

Wait a minute, Wyoming is the Equality State. Oh wait, it is predominantly conservative Republican. I addressed my own concern.

[jerdan25]

08:39 AM on 10/24/2012

But the Mormon state Utah was the worst!! No respect for women.

[karter]

04:11 PM on 10/24/2012

apples to oranges -- the study is fundamentally flawed as they are not comparing males vs females in similar jobs. what a joke!

[spgsaab]

07:05 PM on 10/24/2012

You are 100% right.

[jaguarmissing]

04:27 AM on 10/24/2012

ok..so most if not all the states with the highest level of income equality between the sexes will vote republican in november. it's a great time to be a sociologist. maybe the best way is to see it as a politically inspired stockholm syndrome.

[Nornagest]

04:16 AM on 10/24/2012

You mean that the state dominated by Willard's bizarre cult has the greatest disparity of pay between the genders? What a surprise.

[csch233294]

01:46 AM on 10/24/2012

And that's how Romney-Ryan like it!