Gender-Based Wage Gap

While pay for most Missouri women lags behind that of men, leaders at the Women’s Foundation of Greater St. Louis say some local businesses are leading the way in compensation as well as hiring and promoting women.

The organization released results from a 2017 Employment Scorecard survey ahead of Equal Pay Day, April 10, a symbolic date that draws awareness to pay inequality between men and women, and some cases among women themselves. 

New numbers show women working full-time in Missouri made 78.1 percent of what men did in 2013.

According to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Show-Me State's women earned a median wage of $665 per week, compared to men's $852 in 2013. The state's women's-to-men's earnings ratio dropped slightly from 2012.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois is joining President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats in an election-year push to bridge the pay gap between men and women.

Speaking on the Senate Floor Tuesday, Durbin called on his Republican colleagues to help pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

“It says that women cannot be discriminated in the workplace simply because they are women,” he said.

Only four other metropolitan areas in the United States have bigger gender-based wage gaps than St. Louis. 

That's according to rankings out from the National Partnership for Women & Families.

Here's how wages between men and women in the "top 5" metropolitan areas in the rankings shake out:

1. Seattle: $0.27 wage gap

2. Pittsburgh: $0.27 wage gap