Philadelphia is a lot closer to gender pay equity than the rest of the country. But that doesn’t mean it’s a success story.

Not when you look at the actual wage numbers, anyway.

While women make 90% as much as men in Philly, compared to only 83% as much nationwide, The Inquirer’s analysis of Census Bureau data shows that has much more to do with how little everyone is making than with equal opportunity.

Women in Philadelphia earn a median annual wage of about $45,000, while men make $50,000. Meanwhile, in tonier Chester County, the median annual pay for women is $63,000 — but men there make $83,000. The other counties in the region fall somewhere in between, on overall wages and gender equality.

“The way we have equality in Philadelphia is because everyone’s disadvantaged,” said Judith Levine, a sociologist of gender who directs the Public Policy Lab at Temple University.

Salaries in the city go as low as the minimum wage but often not much higher, meaning they tend to cluster closely together.

The link between low-paying jobs and gender equality in Philadelphia is part of a broader phenomenon, census data show: The more money a group makes, the more unequally that money is distributed. That inequality has barely budged over ten years.

Older women make more than younger women, but less than men their age.

Women with college degrees make more than women without them, but less relative to men with similar educations.

Even in high-paying professions, women make less than men.

White and Asian (including Pacific Islander) women make more than Black and Hispanic women, but less than white and Asian men.

Philadelphia’s workforce is younger, less educated, more Black and Hispanic, and more concentrated in lower-paying jobs than the surrounding suburbs, meaning the city is at once poorer and more equal.

“Having a very small wage gap does not necessarily mean good economic news,” said Levine. “We’d much prefer that wages for men and women be growing and high, but that is not the case.”

Black women in the Philly region earn as much as Black men — but less than almost anyone else

Where people live has deep roots in racist policy, and those segregated housing patterns correlate strongly with different economic outcomes.

Region-wide, white workers earn the most, but white men have consistently made some 30% more than white women. Asian and Hispanic workers made much less than white workers in the 2000s, but both Asian men and women have caught up to their white counterparts. And while Hispanic workers used to be the region’s lowest-earning, they’ve since caught up to Black workers.

But rapid wage growth among Asian and Hispanic workers has also widened both groups’ gender wage gaps. Asian men’s pay grew faster than Asian women’s, and Hispanic men’s wages grew faster than Hispanic women’s.

Meanwhile, Black workers’ wages have stagnated, and potentially even declined, and the gaps between men and women remain minimal.

In a relatively prosperous region, Philly is a more equal but worse-off place

One driver of wage growth among Asian and Hispanic workers is that they often have access to more resources than the first generation of immigrants.

Maggie Lee, 42, remembers realizing that she was making more money right out of college than her parents, who are Chinese immigrants, ever had combined. During her childhood, they worked grueling factory jobs for near-minimum wages.

“It feels like a privilege to be able to think in terms of, ‘Am I getting paid what I’m worth, should I ask for a raise?’ " said Lee, an online course developer in Philadelphia. “Just having those choices feel like huge advantages from what my parents had.”

By contrast, a slew of structural factors conspire to keep Black wages down. In segregated neighborhoods, for example, schools tend to have lower student achievement, higher concentrations of need, and fewer resources — leaving many young Black workers less prepared for the labor market. High rates of incarceration among Black men hold down wages, too. And that’s to say nothing of out-and-out racism in the workplace.

Over time, these factors have helped keep Black workers from the highest-paying jobs and systematically depressed their wages.

Rasheeda Brown, 40, teaches and cares for pre-kindergartners at Children’s Playhouse Early Learning Center in Newbold, a job she takes pride in. Still, after more than a decade on the job and an associate’s degree, she only makes about $17 per hour. Brown’s working on her bachelor’s, which could help her break $20, but she gets frustrated that the ceiling seems low.

“If I’m experienced with qualifications, and we’re working with children, we’re working with families, we got to have customer service — why are we not being paid what we’re worth?”

Philly is younger and less educated than the suburbs. Both of those things matter.

Black women like Brown are among the groups with the fastest-rising rates of higher education attainment, and roughly twice as many of them earn degrees as Black men.

But for many, getting that education isn’t enough. Black workers with college degrees make far less than their white counterparts, both in and outside the city.

Workers from all racial and ethnic groups make more in the suburbs than their Philly counterparts – particularly Asians, a heavily college-educated group in the suburbs but not the city.

Philadelphia’s population is also younger than the suburbs’. Both lower education and youth are associated with low wages.

Workers of all races and genders do make more money as they get older. But the gender gap grows with age and income. That has a lot to do with structural obstacles.

Perhaps the sharpest wedge between men’s and women’s wages is what advocates call the “motherhood penalty.” Philly-area women who leave the workforce to have children often receive little support: Pennsylvania law does not mandate any paid parental leave, while New Jersey law mandates 12 weeks. Some leave the workforce for good.

In the Philadelphia region, only 47% of women aged 18 to 65 work full time, while 59% of men do.

“Women want to be in there,” said Levine, the Temple professor. “But the way we have no paid family leave and no systematic childcare, women are pushed out of the labor market.”

Even when maternity leave is available, it can slow professional progress. Ariane Hegewisch, a senior researcher at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, says higher-earning women’s careers often end up taking a backseat to child-rearing, simply because families can afford the trade-off.

Meanwhile, poor women often can’t afford to stop working. Instead, they end up working nearly as much as men, and perversely, end up with similar earnings as a result. That’s one reason Black women and other women in Philadelphia have long worked at much higher rates than white or suburban women.

How people “choose” occupations

One area of progress is that pay has become more equitable within a particular job function.

“If you’re looking within job and within industry, you find the gap gets smaller and smaller,” said Peter Cappelli, who directs the Wharton School’s Center for Human Resources.

But inequality is built into the kinds of roles men and women choose – or wind up in.

Location, education, family support, and socialization – who kids want to grow up to be – all play a role. Those factors are in turn affected by race, geography, and affluence, and together can constrain the range of available job opportunities. “It’s a very restricted choice,” said Hegewisch.

The feminist revolution of the 1970s changed gender roles in only one direction. Research has shown that women have moved into previously male-dominated, high-paying fields like law and medicine – but men have not moved en masse to female-dominated ones like teaching or nursing, which remain underpaid relative to the education they require.

That imbalance contributes to the wage gap overall: According to Hegewisch’s research, average wages across the 20 most male-dominated fields were 21% higher than across the 20 most female-dominated professions nationwide.

Local forces, including unions, also shape outcomes

Some forces are specific to the regional economy. As well-paid manufacturing jobs disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s, Philadelphia was left with fewer positions for less-educated residents.

Today’s economy is largely driven by higher education and medicine – which provide starkly different opportunities to those with and without education. Doctors, for instance, make far more than home health aides.

But even controlling for education, not all industries are equally accommodating to women. Hegewisch cited finance, consulting, and law as fields with plenty of women, but with inflexible cultures and long hours that disadvantage them once they start families.

One important local element is unions, a longstanding and lately resurgent force.

Unions have been historically important in Philadelphia, and represented more diversified, skilled labor than in other factory towns like Pittsburgh, according to Philip Scranton, an economic historian at Rutgers-Camden. Consequently, they’ve had a lot of power to determine wages. At times, they’ve wielded that power to exclude people of color and women.

But unions can also be an equalizing force. Marjorie Goldberg, 59, a part-time violist and vice president of the Philadelphia Musicians’ Union, said tools such as blind auditions, collective bargaining, and transparent wages have protected her from hiring and pay disparities in a male-dominated industry.

“Men are not getting paid more than women on [these] union jobs,” said Goldberg.

An uncertain future

It’s hard to say whether greater equality awaits the next generation of women workers.

Levine, the Temple sociologist, is studying the earnings of a large cohort of young men and women. So far, she’s seeing pretty good parity; on the other hand, at least one other study has found wage gaps early in young people’s careers. And of course, gaps for older workers persist.

The pandemic has further scrambled the picture. Its arrival in 2020 brought immense upheaval in the labor force, with more women leaving than men. Two years on, the economy remains in flux, with historically high inflation, slow growth, and a tight labor market. The impacts on the wage gap remain to be seen, although a recent census report suggests wages across groups remained steady — and thus unequal — last year.

To address continued inequities, scholars and activists said employers can do more to address structural issues in hiring, retention, and promotion, which can in turn shrink the pay gap, including:

Advertising jobs to a broader range of candidates.

Ensuring hiring panels prioritize diversity.

Dropping unnecessary credential requirements.

Avoiding hiring on “culture fit,” which can entrench biases.

Many emphasized that public policy also has a role. Paid leave and childcare were frequently cited, and higher minimum wage and salary transparency laws also came up.

“In the policy arena, the U.S. is an incredible outlier,” said Levine, “and it’s one of the biggest problems for women.”

The way we have equality in Philadelphia is because everyone’s disadvantaged.