Visualizing the Gender Pay Gap Over Time

Data can be the key to exposing injustices in society. These graphs are a strong example of that. They examine the pay gap between men and women ever since the introduction of the Equal Pay Act. This legislation was supposed to eliminate the gap entirely, but we can see from the graphs that even sixty years later, the gap still exists. There has been some improvement. In the 60’s the pay gap was $0.61 to the man’s dollar and we’re now up to $0.84 to a man’s dollar in 2022. Graphs like this make it clear when we still have work to do:

Click below to zoom

The Equal Pay Act was introduced to give workers of all kinds more rights. It covered child labor as well as the gender-based wage gap. Following the timeline displayed, we can see that it certainly had an effect on the wage gap, but it didn’t close it entirely, and change came slowly. It’s no coincidence that this came about in the 1960s since previously, it was uncommon for women to work outside the home. When they did, they were limited to roles like nursing, teaching, and secretarial positions. The feminist movement of the 60s helped millions of women enter the workforce, but it was clear right away they wouldn’t be treated the same as their male coworkers. We love how the data presents a detailed picture of this issue. You can see comparisons by the dollar and by yearly salary. In both cases, women consistently lag behind for no discernible reason other than their gender. Using calculations based on all this data, we can predict that if change continues at this rate, the gap won’t close for another few decades. We hope visualizations like this can help inspire faster change!