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1. Why do you think women are paid less than men? 

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1. Why do you think women are paid less than men? 

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Before watching the video, write down your own thoughts to the question above on a sticky-note for later. Then, watch the video. Once you are done, write down 1 word to describe your reaction to the video, on a separate sticky-note.

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Kids Explain Why Women Are Paid Less Than Men

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Log into Newsela and read the article. Take a few notes (2-3) while reading for each paragraph.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Spend some time reviewing the different charts and write down any observations you notice.

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The global trend towards extreme wealth and income concentration has dramatically strengthened the economic and political power of those individuals - overwhelmingly male - at the top. In the United States and around the world, women continue to be underrepresented in high-level, highly paid positions and overrepresented in low-paying jobs. Women of color and transgender individuals experience particularly high levels of poverty, unemployment, and other economic hardships. Gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace contribute significantly to these persistent economic divides.

Gender Income Gaps

Female-dominated occupations - such as childcare and restaurant service - continue to occupy the lower rungs of the U.S. wage ladder. Women make up 63 percent of workers earning the federal minimum wage, a wage rate stuck at $7.25 since 2009. By contrast, women represent only 5 percent of CEOs at Fortune 500 firms. CEOs took home $13.1 million on average in 2016.

White males particularly dominate highly lucrative financial industry jobs. At the top five U.S. investment banks (JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup), males make up from 69 to 82 percent executives and top managers. The share who are white ranges from 78 to 87 percent. More than two-thirds of all New York City securities industry employees were male in 2016, and nearly two-thirds were white.

Men make up an overwhelming majority of top earners across the U.S. economy, even though women now represent almost half of the country's workforce. Women comprise just 27 percent of the top 10 percent, and their share of higher income groups runs even smaller. Among the top 1 percent, women make up slightly less than 17 percent of workers, while at the top 0.1 percent level, they make up only 11 percent.

Other major economies show similar trend lines. A study of eight high-income countries found that women made up just 14 percent to 22 percent of the top 1 percent of earners. These surveys were conducted during the 2010-2014 period. The U.S. figure is from 2012.

Throughout the U.S. workforce, women remain vastly underpaid. Among full-time workers, women earned less than 81 cents for every dollar a man earned in 2016. If part-time workers were included, the gap would be even wider, since women are more likely to work reduced schedules, often in order to manage childrearing and other caregiving work.

Within racial groups, the largest pay gaps between men and women appear among whites and Asians - not because Latinas and black women have made faster progress towards equity but because average pay for men in these groups falls far below the compensation of white and Asian men.

American women earn less than men, on average, in all industries. The largest pay gaps are in management positions, where men made $88,000 on average in 2016, compared to just $55,000 for women. The smallest gap appears in the construction sector, but women make up only 9 percent of workers in this industry.

The U.S. gender pay gap, while unacceptably large, is not the world's widest. But accurately measuring these gaps across countries can be difficult. Within the OECD group of higher-income nations, South Korea holds the widest gap, with men earning 37 percent more than women, on average. The country with the narrowest gap: Luxembourg, where men make just 3.4 percent more than women. Gaps have been smallest in OECD countries where the share of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements hits at least 80 percent and widest in countries with weak collective bargaining and no or very low minimum wages.

The International Labor Organization concedes that more work needs to be done to develop more accurate global gender gap analyses. One factor skewing the numbers: Women do considerably more unpaid work, from housekeeping to caring for children and the elderly. Among the 21 countries reporting data for at least one year during the 2013-2015 period, the West Bank and Gaza had the greatest imbalance, with men devoting just 16 percent as much time to unpaid domestic and caregiving work as women. Belgium, where men spend 63 percent as much time on these activities as women, ranked at the top.

In the UK, a new regulation requires corporations to disclose the pay gaps between their male and female employees. Financial firms have among the largest divides because of the scarcity of women in top positions. In 2018, HSBC reported the biggest gap, with the bank's female employees averaging just 41 percent as much as UK male employees. For all 10,000 firms in the survey, the median-paid male employee received 9.7 percent more in pay than the median female.

Gender Wealth Gaps

Most inequality analysis focuses on income (the wages earned from a job or from capital gains) rather than wealth (the sum of one's assets minus debts). Income inequality, while stark, pales in comparison to wealth inequality. The divides become even more dramatic when viewed through a gender lens.

At the top end, we have no more striking sign of increasing global wealth concentration than the rise of the billionaire class. The number of individuals with fortunes worth at least $1 billion more than doubled between 2010 and 2018, while remaining overwhelmingly male. In 2018, only 256 women ranked among the world's 2,208 billionaires. Seventy-seven hail from the United States, more than double the number in any other country.

One important component of wealth, retirement savings, shows an even wider gap between men and women. According to the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, American women in 2017 held $42,000 in median retirement savings, compared to $123,000 for men. Some 21 percent of women and 12 percent of men have less than $10,000 in retirement accounts. Both pension plan and Social Security payouts reflect in part past earnings. The gender pay gap means women end up with fewer post-retirement resources. In 2017, the $15,000 average annual Social Security benefit for women lagged the benefit for men by $4,000. The smaller retirement nest eggs of women also have to stretch further than male retirement savings, simply because women have longer life expectancies.

Debt also significantly impacts wealth. Crushing student loan burdens drag many young Americans far into the negative side of the wealth line, with the heaviest for female students. Women comprise 56 percent of college students, but hold nearly two-thirds of outstanding student loan debt.

According to the American Association of University Women, black women graduate with the most debt - $30,400, on average - compared to $22,000 for white women and $19,500 for white men.

Gender Poverty Gaps

The gender poverty gap widened over the past 50 years. In 1968, 10.8 percent of women aged 18-64 (6.1 million women) and 7.2 percent of men (3.7 million) in this age group lived below the poverty line. In 2016, 13.4 percent of women in this age group (13.4 million women) were living in poverty, compared to 9.7 percent of adult men (9.4 million men). The poverty threshold for a single person in 2016: $11,880 in annual income. Households led by single women with children had a poverty rate of 35.6 percent, more than twice the 17.3 percent rate for households led by single men with children, according to the National Women's Law Center.

Poverty is a particularly acute problem for women of color, affecting 21.4 percent of Black women, 18.7 percent of Latinas, and 22.8 percent of Native American women, compared to the national poverty rate for white men of 7.0 percent.

Transgender Economic Gaps

Transgender Americans experience poverty at double the rate of the general population, and transgender people of color experience even higher rates. The National Center for Transgender Equality has found that 43 percent of Latino, 41 percent of Native American, 40 percent of multiracial, and 38 percent of Black transgender respondents lived in poverty in 2015.

In 2015, the overall unemployment rate for transgender Americans stood at 15 percent, compared to 5 percent for the general population. The unemployment rate ran even higher for American Indian, Black, Latino, Middle Eastern, and multi-racial transgender Americans.

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Gender Economic Inequality - Inequality.org

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The global trend towards extreme wealth and income concentration has dramatically strengthened the economic and political power of those individuals - overwhelmingly male - at the top. In the United States and around the world, women continue to be underrepresented in high-level, highly paid positions and overrepresented in low-paying jobs.

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When you think of gender equality, do you include all women? What does this picture below mean to you? Go back to number 3 and read more about gaps among women of color as well.

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Listen to the story and begin to think about similarities you see between women around the world.

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Skip to Content

A lot or a little?

The parents' guide to what's in this book.

Info on the many disciplines spotlighted -- e.g., astronomy/eclipses, computer programming/COBOL, Surrealism/Abstract Expressionism, anthropology, African diaspora, dance/Dunham Technique/Ballet Folklórico de México, the Manhattan Project/subatomic particles, alkaloids' role in chemotherapy, ethnomusicology/Nueva Canción, astronomy/spiral galaxies/Newton's theory of gravitation/dark matter. Back matter includes suggestions for further reading and research, plus glossary with terms from "aboriginal" to "virus."

Women from all cultures, backgrounds can be scientists, artists. If you have vision for something, it might not be accepted or acknowledged right away; just keep working. Science and the arts have much in common; both are creative, require critical thinking and inventiveness. Artistic skills like drawing can be put to use in sciences like engineering and architecture, and technical skills can come to play in art.

All the women profiled are positive role models. They come from many countries, continents, cultures, and represent many races.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
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Our ratings are based on child development best practices. We display the minimum age for which content is developmentally appropriate. The star rating reflects overall quality and learning potential.
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Little Dreamers: Visionary Women Around the World - Book Review

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Skip to Content The parents' guide to what's in this book. Info on the many disciplines spotlighted -- e.g., astronomy/eclipses, computer programming/COBOL, Surrealism/Abstract Expressionism, anthropology, African diaspora, dance/Dunham Technique/Ballet Folklórico de México, the Manhattan Project/subatomic particles, alkaloids' role in chemotherapy, ethnomusicology/Nueva Canción, astronomy/spiral galaxies/Newton's theory of gravitation/dark matter.

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Can't stop, won't stop. You have many new resources to help you answer our main question above! There are many women listed in these last few posts...pick 1 and start researching! Quilt square project coming soon...

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The face of politics is changing for the better.

It's been proven time and time again that women rule the world. The midterm elections welcomed record-breaking numbers for women with 84 percent of them being women of color. While the numbers weren't completely on our side, there were an overwhelming amount of history-making elections across the country.

From roles of judges to the senate and house seats, women of color like Letitia James, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar fought for education, economic justice for working families and healthcare. There's also black women, the most overwhelmingly Democratic group in America, that continued to show out for Andrew Gillium in Florida, Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Beto O'Rourke in Texas.

Below are just some of the women who made history on election night.
READ MORE: 5 Things To Know About Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Politics' New Aspirant
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29, is the youngest woman elected to Congress in US history. Rep. Abby Finkenauer joined Ocasio-Cortez in also becoming one of the youngest women ever elected to Congress. Like Ocasio-Cortez, the Iowa Democrat is 29-years-old.

Learn more about Ocasio-Cortez here.

Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are the first Muslim women elected to Congress.

Learn more about Tlaib here and Omar here.

Ilhan Omar is also the first Somali-American woman in Congress.

In New York, Letitia James becomes the first woman in New York to be elected as attorney general, the first African-American woman to be elected to statewide office and the first black person to serve as attorney general.

Learn more about Letitia James here.

Democrats Sharice Davids (left), a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and Deb Haaland (right), a member of New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo people are the first Indigenous women in Congress. Davids is also the first openly LGBTQ+ person to represent Kansas in Congress.

Learn more about Davids here and Haaland here.

Lauren Underwood, elected to represent Illinois' 14th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, makes history as the first woman and first African-American elected to represent the district.

Learn more about Underwood below and here.

Young Kim is highly to become the first Korean-American woman in Congress.

Learn more about Kim below.

Jahana Hayes (D-CT) is the first black woman in Connecticut history to be elected to the House of Representatives.

Learn more about the former teacher of the year here.

El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar (left) and Sylvia Garcia (right), a Democratic state senator, are Texas' first-ever Latina women in Congress.

Learn about Escobar and Garcia here.

Ayanna Pressley has become Massachusetts' first African-American congresswoman.

Learn more about Pressley here.

Juliana Stratton is the first black women to serve as lieutenant governor of Illinois.

Learn more for Stratton here.

Colombian-born Lina Hildago will now serve as a Harris County judge in Houston, TX. The 27-year-old dethroned Ed Emmett, who had the position for 11 years.

I'm an immigrant running for the highest office in the 3rd largest county in America. A county that's had 3 500-year floods in 3 yrs. A county complicit in the separation of families. A county w/the largest mental health facility in TX, the Harris County Jail. We deserve better. pic.twitter.com/qDD26QWRcn

- Lina Hidalgo (@Lina4HC) August 27, 2018

READ MORE: Oprah On Campaigning For Stacey Abrams: "I've Earned The Right To Do Exactly What I Want To Do"

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15 Women Of Color Who Made History In The 2018 Midterm Elections

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The face of politics is changing for the better. It's been proven time and time again that women rule the world. The midterm elections welcomed record-breaking numbers for women with 84 percent of them being women of color. While the numbers weren't completely on our side, there were an overwhelming amount of history-making elections across the country.

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When you have time, start listening to this talk and write down things you agree with, disagree with, shock you, anger you...

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We should all be feminists | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | TEDxEuston

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Enjoy this Beyonce song, but start thinking about women from all over the world and the contributions they have made to decrease gender inequality. Maybe it is through music like Beyonce, through acting, teaching, politics, etc. We have focused on the U.S., but there are women everywhere making changes

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Ms. Oprah Winfrey

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Message from our Founder Ms. Oprah Winfrey I can hardly believe that more than 10 years ago we officially opened the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls and welcomed our first class of itty bitty students, they were like young pups.

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10. Changing Education around the world...

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10. Changing Education around the world...

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Ms. Michelle Obama

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How do you think we can change the way young children view women? Who are some women, locally, nationally, internationally, making changes in gender equality?