Louisiana has the nation’s greatest wage disparity between women and men, putting the state behind every other state and the District of Columbia for gender pay disparity, according to the Louisiana Workforce Commission.
Women in Louisiana make 65 cents for every dollar paid to men, creating a 35% wage gap, data from the U.S. Census Bureau show. The gap is worse for Hispanic and black women, who earn 52 cents and 49.2 cents, respectively, for every dollar a white man makes.
For the state, West Carroll Parish holds the largest gap at 51%, while women in six Acadiana parishes face a gap of at least 42%.
On the other side of the spectrum, New Orleans has the smallest gap. Women in the Crescent City make 80 cents for every dollar a man makes, while women working in neighboring Jefferson Parish make 79 cents.
The gap is worse when considering that a higher percentage of women than men in Louisiana have a high school diploma, 84.5% to 81.1%, and a bachelor’s degree, 23.1% to 21.1%, data show.
The Workforce Commission released these numbers today as a state Senate committee debated legislation, Senate Bill 254 by state Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, that would extend the current law to make sure all workers in Louisiana receive equal pay. The current law applies only to state and public employees.
The debate comes on the heels of a 2014 study completed by the Legislature’s Louisiana Fair Pay Task Force which found the high-paying jobs in science, technology, engineering, math and skilled sectors are dominated by men. Women also are paid less in other fields in which they outnumber their male counterparts, the study found.
