By the Numbers: Women Leveling the Financial Playing Field

In the university, home and workplace, women are making strides, and shifting attitudes about gender differences and equality. Though there’s still a long way to go until women and men reach parity when it comes to work and compensation, but some encouraging stats illustrate the ways women are on an upward trajectory.

2017 was the first year since 2007 that the gender pay gap showed a statistically significant reduction, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

18% of first-time homebuyers are single women, compared to 8% of single men, according to a National Association of Realtors report. 

57% of bachelor’s degrees in the United States are earned by women, versus 43% earned by women in 1970, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

33% of women have an advanced academic degree, compared to 32% percent of men, according to a 2016 Census Bureau report.

12.4% is the average amount of their paycheck that women contributed into their retirement accounts, compared to 11.6% of their paycheck for men.

89 cents to the dollar is the pay gap between men and women. It persists, but for younger women the gap is smaller than for older women, who make 82 cents to the dollar compared to men, according to a report from the Pew Research Center.

1% is the amount by which women’s investments outperform those of men, according to a joint study from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Davis.

50% of women between the ages of 60 and 64 were still working in 2013—not necessarily for the money, but rather because they were invested in their careers, according to a Harvard study.

Maridel Reyes is a journalist based in New York. Her work has appeared in Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, the New York Post, USA Today and The Boston Globe.

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