Colorado’s gap in pay between men and women is wide, according to a report released last week by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
“There are some signs of progress for women in Colorado” said the organization’s Executive Director and Vice President Barbara Gault in a statement. “But large racial and ethnic disparities persist across nearly all measures, and we’ve seen declines in women’s earnings and labor force participation, along with increasing female poverty. The state needs focused efforts to pick up the pace of change in these areas.”
Here are five troubling facts from the report:
The gap
Women get paid on average $7,244 less than men for the same full time jobs.
Race matters
White women are earning 77.1 cents on the dollar of white men. The situation is more dire for Hispanic women who earn 53.8 cents and black women who earn 65.5 cents on the dollar a white man in the same job, with the same education and same experience earns.
Poverty rates
In Colorado, women are more likely to live in poverty than men.
The future
If policies don’t change, the gender pay gap won’t close in Colorado until 2057.
Closing the gap
Close the gap, and the Colorado economy would grow by $9.2 billion and 50 percent fewer women would be living in poverty.
Read the rest of the report here.
Photo credit: Claus Rebler, Creative Commons, Flickr.
