November 23, 2005 10:06 AM

Gender gap heading in right direction (for women!)
Posted by Diane Danielsonat 10:06 AM

Good news before the holiday shopping season. The Boston Globe business section reports that there's been movement in the right direction on the gender gap. Now women only make $.20 less/$1.00 than men doing the same work at the same level for the same hours. (FYI - women who drop out or work part-time were never part of the calculation.)

Women narrowed the pay gap with men in Massachusetts and the nation last year, but they still earn only about 80 percent of male workers, the Labor Department reported yesterday.

In Massachusetts, median weekly earnings of women were 79.3 percent of men's, up from 78 percent in 2003. Nationally, women earned 80.3 percent of what men did last year, up from 79.5 percent.

In New England, Vermont had the narrowest pay gap last year, with women earning 85 percent of what men did, while New Hampshire had the widest, as women earned just 72.3 percent of men. Nationally, the gap was narrowest in California, where women earned 87.1 percent of men's pay, and widest in Wyoming, where the figure was just 65.9 percent.