Higher Education Doesn't Close the Gender Gap

International Equal Pay Day, observed by the United Nations on September 18, seeks to draw attention to the continuous efforts towards the achievement of equal pay for work of equal value. Despite these efforts and the progress made in terms of women's participation in the labor force, no country has successfully closed the gender pay gap and globally, women still make roughly 80 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Even in countries like the United States, where women are now more likely than men to graduate from college, the gender pay gap persists. In fact, women are paid less than men at every education level, with the wage gap actually widening for more advanced degrees. "Women cannot educate themselves out of the gender wage gap," the EPI concludes.

According to an analysis of wage data by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the gender wage gap stood at 21.8 percent for Americans without a high school degree and grew to 26.3 percent for workers with an advanced degree. On average, women with an advanced degree earned $17.70 less per hour than their male counterparts in 2025. Annually, that amounts to a wage gap of more than $35,000. Interestingly, the wage gap is smallest among lower-wage workers, partly because the minimum wage creates an equal baseline.