Women's History Month: Data & Statistics
Census Data for Women
The Census occurs every 10 years, in years ending in zero, to count the population and housing units for the entire United States. Its primary purpose is to provide the population counts that determine how seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are apportioned.
Data about women is available in the data tables and tools associated with the topics listed on the page linked above.
This fact sheet compiled for Women's History Month includes some population statistics for each of these groups. The page also includes links to Population Profiles with more detailed information.
Timelines
- Timeline of Legal History of Women in the United StatesProvided by the National Women's History Alliance. Detailed timeline covering 1701 to 2013.
- Women's Rights in the Early RepublicConstructed by the National Women's History Museum, this timeline of events includes images from various sources to accompany the description of each event. This timeline begins in 1776 and ends in 1848.
- Women's Rights TimelineThis timeline from the National Archives beginning with 1866 picks up where the previous one in this list left off. The events in this timeline are accompanied by documents and images from the National Archives collections.
Infographics & Statistics
LinkdIn: The Top 10 Gender Equity Trends from the Past Decade: Infographic Edition
The Gender Pay Gap
$512 billion = The economic upside of closing the gender pay gap in the United States.
$290 billion = The amount of money we could add to families' earnings by closing the gender pay gap. That's 16x the amount spent on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
The pandemic widened the gender pay gap by 5 percentage points. We are now back to 1998 levels in terms of gender pay equity.
This is how the pay gap shifts at various intersections. (Amount made for each dollar a man earns)
- Asian American Women: $.84
- All Women (aggregate): $.82
- White Women: $.79
- Mothers: $.74
- Black Women: $.63
- Native American Women: $.61
- Latinas: $.58
- Married Lesbian Couples: $.96
About three quarters of Americans who say country has work to do on gender equality see sexual harassment as a major obstacle
Among those who say the country has not gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, % of me and women saying each of the following is a major obstacle to having equal rights with men in our country
- Sexual harassment
- Men: 72%
- Women: 82%
- Women not having the same legal rights as men
- Men: 59%
- Women: 73%
- Different expectations society has for men/women
- Men: 58%
- Women: 72%
- Not enough women in positions of power
- Men: 55%
- Women: 71%
- Family responsibilities
- Men: 37%
- Women: 47%
- Men and Women having different physical abilities
- Men: 19%
- Women: 20%
- Women not working as hard as men
- Men: 13%
- Women: 14%
- 1 in 4 women experiences domestic violence in her lifetime
- 1 in 4 girls will be sexually abused before turning 18.
- 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted during college.
- 1 in 9 men experiences domestic abuse in his lifetime.
- 1 in 15 children is exposed to domestic violence each year in the U.S.
- On average, 20,000 calls are placed to domestic violence crisis lines in the U.S. each day.
