NARROWING THE GENDER PAY GAP BY PROVIDING EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES: The Need for Tenured Female Professors in Higher STEM Institutions in an Effort to Recast Gender Norms

Men and women in the United States do not perform "equal work." The slogan "equal pay for equal work" has become heavily associated with modern data suggesting that women earn around 81 cents for every dollar men earn (.81/1), but is misleading and a misrepresentation of the United States' employment environment. The .81/1 figure represents the median earnings of all U.S. women divided by the median earnings of all U.S. men. 1 The "median wage" is the estimated data point that represents "the boundary between the highest paid 50 percent and the lowest paid 50 percent." 2 The .81/1 figure does not represent the salaries of men and women with similar background training who are employed in the same field. When a man and woman have similar background training, and they are newly employed in the same field, there is still an unaccountable salary difference of 5%. 3 Ten years later, the wage gap between these male and female counterparts increases to 12%. 4