Finance is different for everyone. We all inhabit our own money realities: white people and people of color, Gen Z and baby boomers, high earners and those with lower incomes.
Women live in their own financial reality, too. One where the gender pay gap is a force holding back their progress, seeping into every aspect of their financial well-being. One where caregiving responsibilities often fall on their shoulders, affecting their careers.
Yet numbers show women’s resilience in the face of these obstacles. They routinely negotiate to earn more money. They buy more homes than men despite struggling with upfront costs, improving their long-term financial security. They might not always feel good about their finances, but they remain optimistic nevertheless.
We gathered our data from the past year to paint a financial portrait of today’s American woman. Learn about their struggles and how they overcome these challenges — from the statistics, financial experts and women themselves.
The pay gap has a ripple effect — and it’s growing again
On average, women make less money than men do for the same work. This fact has a snowball effect on their long-term financial security. And, despite all the progress, this issue has proven persistent.
For the first time since the 1990s, the gender pay gap has widened for two consecutive years, our analysis of Census Bureau data found. In 2024, women working full time, year-round earned 81 cents for every dollar men earned — down from 83 cents the year before and 84 cents in 2022.
Women working full-time lose $542,800 due to the pay gap over a 40-year career, according to the American Association of University Women’s analysis of Census Bureau data. That’s more than half a million dollars that could fundamentally change the financial fortunes of not just one woman, but could also lay groundwork for generational wealth in the form of long-term investments, retirement savings or purchasing a home that builds equity. Consider that the median sales price of a house in the U.S. is a little over $405,000, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
And the inequity often begins early in a woman’s working years, compounding the problem. At the critical step from entry level to manager, only 93 women are promoted for every 100 men, and the gap is wider for women of color (74 per 100 men), according to the Women in the Workplace 2025 report by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org. Further, women only make up 29% of C-suite roles, and their share shrinks with each leadership level. The study also found that while women remain as committed to their careers as men, they face persistent structural barriers that limit their advancement.
“People make a lot of assumptions about women’s behavior… and treat them based on those assumptions,” says Kate Bahn, senior vice president and chief economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “People will assume that women aren’t as ambitious as men, and so they receive fewer mentorship opportunities and promotion opportunities, even if they actually are just as ambitious.”
But women advocate for higher earnings, and that ripples, too
The gender pay gap makes it all the more crucial for women to advocate for themselves and seek higher pay — and many women do. Forty-six percent of women said they had successfully negotiated a raise during their professional careers, according to our Financial Habits survey. That’s more than women who said they never had (36%). Moreover, 23% of women said they had negotiated a pay raise at least once a year.
Increasing your income needs to happen on a regular basis, says Rita-Soledad Fernández Paulino, founder and CEO of Wealth Para Todos, a financial coaching and education platform that works to remove barriers to financial security for marginalized communities.
“Inflation is going up, and a lot of times, our income isn’t keeping up,” she explains.
Besides leaving more room in the budget for everyday spending and long-term wealth building, a higher income can lead to a lower debt-to-income ratio (DTI) if you don’t increase your debt. A lower DTI can result in further savings as you’re likely to get better terms when qualifying for credit, whether it’s a mortgage or an auto loan.
Aleksa Diaz, 30, is a tech support agent in a tech company in Austin, Texas. She learned to negotiate straight out of college when she asked her first employer to add $5,000 to the offer. Today, she’s looking for a new role and utilizing AI to prepare for negotiations.
“It gave me some really good prompts and asked me some really good questions to showcase the skills that I have that would give the most leverage for a successful negotiation,” she explains.
Being prepared is something Fernández Paulino also highlights. She recommends looking for data on salaries for specific positions within a field while keeping in mind the value of skills and expertise a woman can bring. Sources such as Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter and Indeed can be helpful in this kind of research.
Adena DeMonte, a 42-year old marketing professional in San Jose, California, also understands the importance of negotiation. In the past, she had opportunities where she increased her salary by $10,000 to $20,000 or had benefits added.
“Once a company decides they want you, you really have to just look at the job market and what your value is,” she says. “Things have definitely changed over time, and I look at that too, but most companies won’t offer you the most that they can offer.”