In 1995, an equal percentage of men and women completed their bachelor’s degrees. Since then, the gap has expanded with women in the lead. In 2024, 47% of young women and 37% of young men aged 25 to 34 held a bachelor’s degree. This trend is consistent across all major ethnic and racial groups, and yet correlating wages fail to follow suit. While women increasingly dominate higher education, recent polls find they continue to be paid only 83 cents on a man’s dollar .

According to an analysis created by the Pew Research Center , 50.7% of the labor force that is college-educated in the United States is made up of women. Women first eclipsed men as the majority in 2019, and the trend has continued since. The increase in earnings gained from a college degree is known as the college wage premium. The declining growth of this premium lends a possible explanation for the slowing pace of achieving gender pay parity. This does not solve the puzzle, however, as the gender pay gap remains very similar for all women, no matter their level of education.

Since 2002, the gender pay gap has stalled at a 17% difference between what women and men earn as full-time workers within the United States. Young workers aged 25 to 34 see only a 5% difference, but the gap grows as adults progress. In 2010, for example, young women gained 92% of what their young male counterparts earned, but a decade later, this demographic of women was found to earn 84% in comparison to men of the same age. This pattern of young women facing a smaller pay gap, only to see that gap widen as they age, was found to occur across multiple generations in the 2000’s.

A dominant influence contributing to this disparity is likely entering parenthood. The greatest increase in the pay gap happens within the 35 to 44 age group, which reflects the period in which women are most likely to raise young children at home. In direct contradiction, employed men in the same age group assumed to have young children have been found to receive greater pay . These pay fluctuations are known as “motherhood wage penalties” and “fatherhood wage premiums.”

The expansion of the pay gap for parents in the workforce is therefore not caused by mothers receiving less for being less qualified, but rather is caused by fathers experiencing an increase in their pay. Mothers are not being financially punished for having children, but they are not being rewarded the way fathers are.

Paired with aggressive return to office policies that have been leaving women who act as caretakers with the choice of finding childcare or leaving employment altogether, the pay gap has further stagnated.

Statistically, more women are going to college, completing their degrees, and entering the workforce on a strong footing, but reaching gender pay parity is still out of grasp. The gap is not predicted to close until 2056 for all women on average, with women of color further disadvantaged.