There was a time in Indiana when, on average, a woman earned just 73 cents of every dollar earned by a man.
That time was 2012.
According to the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau from that year, as reported in a recent news article in the Bloomington Herald-Times, the median annual income of women in Indiana was $33,419; men earned $45,620.
You might believe that this disparity results from women choosing to go into lower paying fields and taking time off for child rearing. Those factors certainly play a role in the gender income differential.
But get this: The gender workplace equality gap in Indiana is wider than in 45 other states, according to personal finance website WalletHub, indicating that pay discrimination against women is still entrenched in the Hoosier state.
Part of the problem is that at least two professions that attract large numbers of women — teaching and nursing — offer relatively low pay in Indiana compared to many other states. Public K-12 school teachers in Indiana, for example, earned an average wage of $50,516 in 2011-12, almost $5,000 below the national average, according to a report from the National Education Association.
Meanwhile, a 2013 report from the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics showed nurses in Indiana earning a median income of $58,320 annually, ranking Indiana 37th among the 50 states and lower than all of its contiguous states, other than Kentucky.
Indiana’s low pay scale for these important professions signals both a disregard for professional women and too little emphasis on education and health care.
So, what’s a state to do?
Simple. Pay teachers, nurses and other professional women salaries commensurate with the importance of the work they do. And make sure that women are being paid equally to their male workplace colleagues.
Summary
The gender workplace equality gap in Indiana is wider than in 45 other states, indicating that pay discrimination against women is still entrenched in the Hoosier state.