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CONCLUSION <br />The gender pay gap is persistent and ongoing: It has closed by less than a nickel during <br />the 21st century. Statistics show clearly that women experience a pay gap in every state, <br />at every age, across all racial and ethnic groups, and in nearly every occupation. <br />Women working full time in the United States are paid 20 percent less than men, despite <br />greater educational attainment. This gap is a result of gender norms and bias that are woven <br />throughout women's experiences in the workforce. Estimates of the "unexplained" pay gap <br />are often treated as estimates of the effect of direct pay discrimination on women's earnings, <br />but the impact of occupational segregation, motherhood penalties, and racial biases on <br />women's careers and earnings cannot be dismissed, even if researchers can statistically <br />account for them. <br />Moreover, there are factors that exacerbate the pay gap over a woman's career. For <br />example, the common employer practice of basing a worker's starting pay and pay <br />increases on previous pay carries forward any earlier pay gap from job to job. Additionally, <br />the practice of penalizing workers for discussing wages in the workplace makes it harder <br />for individual women to detect or address the effects of bias and discrimination, making the <br />gap resistant to change. <br />Closing the gender pay gap requires addressing all of the causes of the gap by changing <br />cultural norms, improving employer behavior, and implementing public policy initiatives. <br />AAUW takes a multipronged approach that calls on individuals, employers, and policymakers <br />to end the gender pay gap for the benefit of women, their families, and society. <br />THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT THE GENDER PAY GAP 1 Fall 2018 Edition AAUW • www.aauw.org <br />