The Wage Gap

"Research finds that individual women in same-sex couples tend to have a wage advantage over individual women in married opposite-sex couples. "This may be due to several different factors such as higher educational achievement, different career choices, increased working hours, lower rates of childrearing, or a strong sense among women in same-sex couples that they need to provide for their own economic security." While two women in a same-sex couple only earn $0.79 for every dollar made by their heterosexual married male co-workers, which is still more than her heterosexual married counterpart, a man in a same-sex marriage earns $0.19 cents more.

Wage Gap

LGBTQ+ women, of color along with their white cis-gender heterosexual female co-workers are the ones mostly effected by the pay gap as it exists within the workforce, a study done the Williams Institute in June 2007, finds that gay and bisexual men are too “gay and bisexual men earn 10 percent to 32 percent less than their heterosexual co-workers.” an article by the Center for American Progress (CAP) from 2012 that analyzed the study done by the Williams Institute found that even in 1995 did gay and bisexual men earn "somewhere between 11 percent and 27 percent less than their heterosexual co-workers".

“Research finds that LGBT women are at increased risk for economic insecurity—compared to other women and compared to men,, As seen in the infographic above. According to the survey, “less than three out of ten (29%) LGBTQ+ women were thriving financially compared to 39% of non-LGBTQ+men."

Image: Center for American Progress (CAP), & For Amer Movement Advancement Project (MAP). (2015). Who Are LGBTQ Women in America PAYING AN UNFAIR PRICE The Financial Penalty for LGBT Women in America (pp. 1-60, Rep.). https://www.lgbtmap.org/file/paying-an-unfair-price-lgbt-women.pdf.

Trans-women 3.8 times as likely to live in poverty compared to bisexual women (2.1x) who are between the ages of 18-44 years old. Whereas LGBT women living alone are 1.4 times as likely to live in poverty.

Wage Gap and Poverty

The in-depth report on the financial penalty for LGBTQ+ women in America, done in 2015 by the Center for American Progress (CAP) co-authored by Movement Advancement Project (MAP) not only provides a snapshot of how the LGBTQ+ women are affected by the wage gap in comparison to their male identifying counterparts, but it also defines the the difference between economic security and financial instability. Defining economic security as follows:"Economic security means that an individual or family has the financial resources to provide not only for basic necessities but also to weather unexpected events that negatively impact one’s financial situation, such as a period of unemployment, a serious illness, or the death of a spouse or partner." Whereas economic insecurity "refers to financial instability and uncertainty and in many instances means difficulty obtaining the most basic necessities."Many LGBT women are in relationships and many are raising children. Approximately half of lesbians (51%) are married or living with a partner, compared to 31% of bisexual women and 57% of heterosexual women. The survey also found that nearly half (48%) of LGBT women under 50 years of age were raising children, with higher rates of childrearing for African American, Hispanic, and Asian LGBT women compared to white LGBT women." With additional data from the 2015 U.S. Census reporting that women of color in same-sex couples are nearly twice as likely to be raising children as white women in same-sex couples (35% vs. 24%) More than half of transgender women surveyed in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey were parents (52%).

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