FAST FACT: Get Your Stat on for Women’s History Month

By Kate Meyer*

You don’t have to look hard for statistics on women’s dynamite progress in education. In 1970, 22.1% of women in the labor force had college degrees. In 2010, the number had risen to 66.7%. Women are now more likely to finish high school and attend college than men. And the higher a woman’s educational attainment, the more time she spends working and the less time she spends on household duties. The evidence is clear: women have been taking the workforce by storm, and now comprise nearly 60% of it. But these gains in women’s educational attainment and labor force participation have not been met with significant progress on closing the gender pay gap. In 2010, women still earned only 81.2 cents on the male dollar. You can find more statistics on women’s wage gap by occupation, employment by industry, educational attainment, projected labor force participation and more in the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s March 2011 report here.

*Kate Meyer is a Research and Programs intern at the National Council for Research on Women. She recently graduated from Cornell University where she studied Government , Spanish and was a member of the Cornell Women’s Resource Center Advisory Board.