Despite strides in the 1980s and 1990s, the pay gap between the sexes hasn’t budged in more than a decade.
As USA Today reports, that’s even with growing research and outcry that’s prompted some companies to review—and vow to fix—broad discrepancies in their own workforces. And now some experts predict the pay gap between men and all women won’t vanish until some time in the 23rd century.
The current numbers are glaring: Women make up half the U.S. college-educated workforce, but those with full-time jobs were on average paid 80 cents for every dollar earned by men in nearly every occupation for which there was sufficient earnings data in 2015, according to the nonprofit Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
The gap is especially pronounced when comparing median weekly earnings and far deeper for women of color.
“It’s been stagnant the last 10 to 15 years even though women are better educated,” says Ariane Hegewisch, program director of employment and earnings at IWPR. She calculates that if the current trends continue, women on average will not receive equal pay until 2059.
For women of color, the rate of change is downright glacial—black women will wait until 2124 and Hispanic women will have to wait until 2248, Hegewisch says, compared to 2056 for white women.
