Dive Brief:
- Fifty-four percent of adults think men have more opportunities to earn competitive wages, while 41% say men and women are on equal footing, according to the results of a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. Only 4% of those surveyed believed women had more opportunities.
- The gap is greater among working adults, the research showed. Roughly 3 in 5 employed women said men have more opportunities for higher wages, compared to 40% of employed men who agreed.
- To put a finer point on the different experiences men and women have in the workplace, 30% of employed women say they’ve faced discrimination when trying to earn equal wages because of their gender, while only 10% of employed men said the same, the research found.
Dive Insight:
The uncontrolled gender pay gap increased in 2026, a recent report from compensation vendor Payscale found. Women now make $0.82 per dollar earned by men, down from $0.83 last year.
That translates to around $14,300 less per year in median pay, Payscale said.
The gender pay gap can be more extreme in certain industries. Although women represent more than half of the food service staff and just shy of 58% of the hotel and accommodation workforce, they only earn roughly $0.70 cents per dollar earned by men, according to an analysis released by OysterLink, a hospitality job platform.
The difference in earnings also becomes more striking as women progress in their careers, Glassdoor recently found. Women’s earnings tend to stop increasing in their late 30s, while men’s wages grow throughout their 40s.
While pay transparency efforts try to address these structural inequities, in some cases, their implementation can deter change. Cornell University researchers recently found that a wide pay range can discourage women from applying for some jobs, potentially because they believe they have less ability to negotiate within that pay band.
