Young Women Closer to Parity with Men's Earnings

This week the Pew Research Center released a report on women's earnings. Among the key points: today's young women are the first in modern times to start their work lives at near pay parity with men.

Women ages 25 to 34 in the workforce earned 93 cents for each dollar earned by their male counterparts in 2012. That's notably higher than the 84 cents to the dollar for all working women ages 16 and older. According to Pew, more education, greater labor force participation, and an increased presence in more lucrative occupations have all contributed to a median hourly wage increase of 25 percent for women over the past 30 years.

The Pew study found that Millennial women (identified as ages 18 to 32) are significantly more likely to hold a bachelor's degree than Millennial men, at 38 percent and 31 percent, respectively. Yet, these younger female workers generally reported the perspective that they receive less compensation than men for the same job, that men have an easier road to top executive positions, and that career advancement will be hindered if they choose to start a family.

At the same time, relatively few Millennial women (15%) reported that they had experienced workplace discrimination due to their gender. These women also reported less interest than men in becoming a boss or top manager: one-third of the Millennial ladies said they weren't interested in these positions, while one-fourth of Millennial men said "no thanks" to top management.

The Pew study notes that the body of scholarly research generally concludes that most of the gender wage gap can be explained by factors such as educational attainment, occupational segregation (voluntary and not), and differences in the number of hours worked, even among men and women in full-time employment status.

You can find much more on this at the Pew Research website.