The gender pay gap is getting worse: Here’s how you can help fix it

March 25 is Equal Pay Day, dedicated to raising awareness of the gender pay gap. It’s an important occasion—and also an unusual one, as it happens on a different day each year.

This year it’s March 25, because that’s how long into 2025 a woman must work before she earns what a man earned in 2024 alone. In 2024, Equal Pay Day was March 12. Which means we’re headed in the wrong direction. After years of narrowing, the gender pay gap is growing again.

How bad is it?

• Women who work full-time in the U.S. earn just 84 cents for every dollar a man makes, a difference of more than $10,000 a year. Women who work part-time earn 78 cents for every dollar a man makes.
• Women earn less than men for doing the same job even in professions typically dominated by women.
• Women working in financial management make just 71% of what men do. In retail sales, 72%. In education and childcare administration, 79%. Women working as administrative assistants make only 80% of what men do.
• The pay gap is far smaller for workers aged 25-34 than for all workers. This indicates that men get more raises in their careers than women do.
• Over the course of her career, a woman will make $417,000 less than a man.
• The pay gap persists into retirement. The average woman has 50% less in her 401(k) and gets around $4,000 less in annual Social Security benefits.

If you’re an American woman (or man) you should be outraged. Not only does the gender pay gap harm women, it harms the economy and every American. It cuts the purchasing power of women, undervalues their talents, reduces their participation in the workforce and increases poverty among older women.

The gender pay gap is more than an imbalance, it’s a tipping point. Unequal pay leads to unequal wealth (the typical single man has over $82,000 in wealth, the typical single woman just $58,000) and unequal wealth leads to all sorts of bad outcomes.

In her 2024 book Holding It Together, sociologist Jessica Calarco wrote that “other countries have social safety nets, the U.S. has women.”

This is why one of CREDO Mobile’s issue areas is Women’s Rights.  We’ve donated over $11 million to over 150 nonprofits working for Women’s Rights.

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