Women have been fighting to close the gender pay gap for generations. The pay gap refers to the fact that for every dollar a man makes, equally qualified women make less. Feminists began to study this concept in detail in the 1960s when more women were given more opportunities to work outside the home in a bigger variety of professions. Now, this timeline from Qualtrics shows us how much ground their work has gained. They studied the pay gap ever since 1960. We can see from their detailed graphs that there have been huge strides and improvements, but the gap still exists and it’s still unjustified.
In 1962, the Equal Pay Act sought to eliminate the gap. At that time, women made $0.59 to a man’s dollar. Although there has been a lot of positive change, in 2022 women still only made $0.84 to a man’s dollar. It’s clear more work needs to be done to eliminate the gender pay gap. This timeline gives us fascinating insight into yearly change in these pay differences.