A study by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) finds that in Washington, D.C., women working full-time, year-round, earn 90 percent as much as their male counterparts, taking the No. 1 spot on the list of "State Median Annual Earnings and Earning Ratio."
Maryland, women earn 86 percent as much, which places them No. 3 on the list, just behind Vermont at 87 percent. Travel south to Virginia, and that figure drops to 78 percent—only 1 percentage point above the national average of 77 percent—and 29th place.
Christi Corbett, a senior researcher with the AAUW, told the Washington Examiner that she believes "a large population of federal government employees and a strong union presence are big reasons why there is greater parity between what men and women make in D.C. and Maryland."
The figures for Hispanic women tell a slightly different story. According to the Examiner, Hispanic women earn 56 cents for each dollar a white male makes in Virginia, compared to 46 cents and 41 cents for Maryland and D.C. respectively.
From a historical perspective, the gender pay gap has shrunk from 40 percent in the early 1970s to 23 percent in 2011, but the AAUW's data shows that the narrowing has slowed over the past decade. These figures and some industry-specific data are cited in a 2012 Huffington Post article.
If women actually did the same work for less money, companies would actually *prefer* to hire women. Men get higher pay because they earn it.
It's not worth naming a list of popular women scientists - though I was just yesterday reading about Rosalind Franklin, so I will mention her. Otherwise, you should probably just try Google. If you know anything about the history of science, you'd know that many women were just as responsible for some of the most important discoveries, but *not recognized* because - get this - people didn't think women were smart enough to be taken seriously as scientists. Crazy, right? But somehow, they discovered nebulae (as nameless "computers"), were members of the team that developed fission (but not awarded Nobel Prizes with their male collaborators), they are all over the cutting edge of biology today. Just look into the history of computer programming - find out who the ADA programming language was named after. Geez. As to "better educations" making the difference, woman in STEM jobs still earn less then men in STEM jobs: 86 cents on the dollar, according to the Dept. of Commerce (http://ow.ly/gtfmx).