My article in Miami SunPost Pay (in)Equality.

Women Paid Far Less Than Male Counterparts, Study Says — Especially in Florida

By Bonnie Schindler (Miami SunPost)

The typical full-time female worker does not make as much as her male counterpart in any state, according to a report issued by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a nonprofit research organization affiliated with graduate programs in public policy and women's studies at George Washington University.

Florida is no exception.

The report, “The Best and Worst State Economies for Women,” says that “at the present rate of progress it will take 50 years to close the wage gap nationwide.” Currently, the best “state” for working women was found to be the District of Columbia; the worst state, Arkansas.

According to the report, Florida ranks in the bottom third of an employment and earnings composite index, which combines four indicators of women’s progress: women’s earnings, the wage gap, women’s participation in the labor force and women’s representation in managerial and professional jobs.

“Women still earn less than men, at all levels; that is, women earn 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes,” said Laura Morilla, executive director of the Miami-Dade County Commission for Women.

The disparity is even worse for minority women, Morilla said.

According to the Women’s Policy Research report, on a national level, white women earn 73.1 percent of what white men do; Asian-American women earn 80.8 percent of what white men earn; black women earn 63.4 percent of what white men earn; Hispanic women earn 52.4 percent of white men’s earnings and American Indian women earn 59.8 percent of what their white male counterparts do.

“This especially impacts an area like Miami, where there are so many minority women,” Morilla said.

Minority and ethnic statistics are compared to white men’s wages, as opposed to men in general, because there are large disparities among men in terms of earnings, and this tends to skew the perspective on how women of color fare, Erica Williams, policy analyst at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, told the SunPost.

Read the rest here.