Understanding Gender Inequality through the Gender Wage Gap Problem

A Data Story by Dominic Teo

*Best Viewed on a Laptop Screen

It is common practice to view gender inequality as a single problem rather than a large problem consisting of many smaller components. Gender inequality can be largely divided into the political realm (equal female political representation at the different political bodies) & the economic realm which can be divided into (representation in different industries and at different levels of seniority & the gender pay gap). This data story will be largely focused on the gender wage gap, an area that America does quite poorly (as we'll see), despite their above average performance in other indicators. I've also chosen to focus on the economic realm because I believe that in the short term more can be done to achieve economic gender equality.

This data story will be divided into 2 interactive visualization sections. The first section will focus on comparing the US's performance in achieving gender wage gaps with several other high income OECD countries. Readers are able to choose any yearly range from 2002 to 2017 as well as select any of the countries that they want to explicitly make comparisons with the US. Users are then able to hover around the points for selected countries to get more details. Selected countries will also be color-coded differently for easy differentiation. While the ranks may not change too greatly across the years, users can hover around the points to find the percentage difference in wages. The second section explores how the gender wage gap in the US differs across industries and within the STEM and STEM related industries. These are important industries to focus on since they're among the highest paying jobs in the US and suffer from 2 problems - unequal female representation in these high paying jobs and a gender wage gap that persists even among the women employed.

Selected Years: 2002 - 2017

Choose Countries to Compare with the US

Comparing Gender Wage Gap Problem in STEM & STEM-related Jobs

Scroll down to explore gender wage problems across different industries!

Gender Wage Gap Across Industries

Men's wages are generally higher than that of women across the 3 broad industries of 'STEM occupations', 'STEM related occupations' and 'Non STEM Occupations'. The difference between the median wages are particularly pronounced for STEM-related jobs. The wage gap is so large despite the fact that women hold more of these jobs which suggest that they hold the lower paying jobs in this field.

On the otherhand, while the gender wage gap is not as big in STEM industries, the industry is plagued by an under-representation of women who make up only 26.7% of those employed. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the average wage for STEM jobs are generally much higher hence the under-representation of women mean they're not able to enjoy the higher wages as much as men.

Comparing Gender Wage Gap in the Top 20 STEM Jobs that Employ the Most Women
(Hover Over Points)

The gender wage gap in STEM jobs as seen in the distance between the scatter plots and the equal pay line is not particularly large. Though it's notable that only 1 job, 'Biological Scientists', where the median female earnings are equal to or larger than that of men's.

What is notable however, is the lack of any large circles representing a larger number of women employed at the job. The main problem is the lack of women hired at many of these high paying jobs. For example, the two highest paying jobs, 'Software Developers' and 'Computer Systems Manager', women make up 18.8% and 29.7% of the total employed respectively. Worringly, these are the top 20 jobs that hire the most women.

Comparing Gender Wage Gap in the Top 20 STEM-Related Jobs that Employ the Most Women
(Hover Over Points)

STEM related jobs hire many more women then pure STEM jobs because it includes jobs such as vocational nurses and registered nurses where women make up close to 90% of total employed. However, despite making up majority of the numbers, women's median wages in these jobs are still below that of men's. Despite this, the progress made in STEM related jobs can be said to be better with many of the jobs edging closer to equal median pay than in the other industries.

An outlier is 'other physicians' which is one of the highest paying jobs in the country. As is the case for the higher paying jobs in STEM, women are under-represented at 39% of total employed and not paid as well as their male counterparts with women's median wage coming in at 74% of men's.






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