It’s Not Good To Be A Working Woman In Louisiana (Or Utah)

By current estimates, women still make 79 cents or so to every man's dollar. To put that into perspective, you've already lost $18,245 if you've been working for just four years. Infuriating, right? Break those pay rates down by state, however, and an even more outrageous story presents itself. The American Association of University Women recently analyzed pay gaps by state and found that in some areas, a woman makes only 61 cents to a man's dollar. For reference, this 39 cent pay gap was the average pay gap nationally — in 1982.

According to the latest ranking of states and congressional districts, the worst state for working women is Louisiana. There, women make a mere 65 cents to every man's dollar. The pay gap is the most astounding in Louisiana's third congressional district, where women on average make 61% of what men make. Other offenders? Utah takes second place (not a good thing), with women making 67 percent of what men make; Wyoming comes in third (69 percent).

But the worst news might be that there's a wage gap in every single state. Even in the District of Columbia, which ranks at number one as the least offensive pay gap, there is still a 10% difference in wages. New York falls in at second-closest (with a 13% difference). In fact, when we delved a little bit further, only six of the congressional districts in the top-three-ranking states (excluding D.C.) have closed the pay gap entirely. In Maryland, with a statewide average difference of 15%, District 4 has just a 0.7% difference between men's and women's salaries. New York City also has some promising numbers. New York Congressional District 5 has a 0.3% difference between men's and women's salaries; District 7 has a 0.5% difference. Even more interesting, Districts 13, 14, and 15 all show women's average salaries being higher than men's (a 4.7%, 8%, and 4.5% difference, respectively). All of these districts fall into parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Of course, just because parts of New York City and one district in Maryland has made progress doesn't mean the wage battle is over. These numbers don't apply to all women; previous reports show that Black women make far less than both men and white women. We can only imagine how bad those numbers would look when broken down by state.