Gender equality has taken a more central role in the American political and cultural discourse in recent years. One of the chief targets in the fight for gender equality is the gender pay gap. Even today, women in the United States earn an average of just 82 cents for every dollar men earn. In some jobs, the wage gap is far larger.
Though some prominent politicians have made addressing the apparent injustice a central piece of their policy agenda — including President Barack Obama and his 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — pay inequality has remained effectively unchanged in the past decade.
Pay figures alone do not tell the whole story, and there are several explanations for pay inequality that are not immediately obvious. Such factors include the propensity for men to work longer hours and sort into higher paid positions within certain occupational categories. Still, even when adjusting for such circumstantial factors, an apparent gender bias in the U.S. labor market remains.
Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 24/7 Wall Street reviewed female weekly earnings as a percentage of male weekly earnings in full-time wage and salary occupations to identify the 20 worst paying jobs for women. The jobs on this list span multiple industries, and in many of them women comprise the majority of workers.
