The gender pay gap is a sensitive topic we need to spotlight. We’ve seen it in every industry, from entertainment -- when Patricia Arquette called for wage equality in her 2015 Oscars acceptance speech -- to Wall Street, when CNBC reported in 2019 that Citibank admitted that its female employees earned 29% less than its male employees globally.

In the United States, the gender pay gap is 18%, which means that on average, in 2022, women made 82 cents for every dollar men earned in any industry, according to a recent Pew Research Center study -- a rate that hasn’t significantly changed for two decades.

Women of color continue to suffer the most severe gender wage gap in this country. Black women are paid 63 cents for every dollar white men are paid and must work an additional 214 days to catch up to what white men made in 2020 alone.
Native women are paid about 60 cents and Hispanic women only 57 cents for every $1 earned by white men.

In the insurance industry, women fared worse, earning just 62 cents on the dollar in 2020. As a result, women cannot build savings, withstand economic downturns, and achieve financial stability.