Rhode Island’s Gender Wage Gap

The gender gap in pay between males and females has slowly improved over the last 30 years, but today women still earn less than men. Nationally, women earn on average 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.

In Rhode Island the picture is somewhat better. In 2011, women earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, an improvement from 70 cents in 1980.

The gender wage gap varies across the wage spectrum. For those earning at or near the median wage, the wage gap is the largest - women earn between 80 and 84 cents for each dollar earned by men. The gap narrows, however, at both the lower and upper ends of the wage scale.

The wage gap is the narrowest for those earning slightly above minimum wage (within the 10th and 20th percentiles), where there is less room for big pay disparities. The gap also narrows in the top two percentiles, indicating that women with higher-paying jobs are closer to achieving pay equality than their middle-income counterparts. For those in the 90th percentile, women earned close to 90 percent of what men earned.