Women’s financial power is rising. But it's still a man's world, right?

It’s a surreal time for American women. On the one hand, the United States just installed a president found liable for sexual abuse; who previously appointed three Supreme Court justices to end federal abortion protections, sending mortality rates for pregnant people skyrocketing; and who halted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s collection of equal pay data during his first term. 

On the other hand, a new report says women’s economic gains have outpaced men’s over the past few years. The report from Bank of America, titled "What’s the Power of a Woman’s Wallet?" analyzed internal customer accounts and federal wage data to glean some macroeconomic insights on men’s and women’s workforce participation, wages and spending habits.

Many seem like wins for women. The report says that in five of the last six years, women are spending a greater share of their earnings on nonessential goods like clothes, dining out or entertainment. This "discretionary spending" accounted for 69% of consumers' overall spending last year. 

Those gains were boosted by above-average pay growth that took place in female-dominated sectors during that period, the report said — counseling, social services, childcare, health services, education and retail stores, to name a few. The number of women in the workforce has been growing steadily, too: Among workers ages 25-54, women’s labor force participation rate grew twice as fast as men’s in 2024, the report found.

This is being driven in large part by the share of women graduating college compared to men; in the 2021-2022 academic year, women earned most of the degrees issued by U.S. colleges: 63% of master’s degrees, 59% of bachelor’s degrees and 57% of doctoral degrees.

Still, behind many of these gains are glaring inequalities that make it difficult to conclude that women wield the same financial power as men. 

A persistent pay gap

For one, women typically hold lower-paying jobs than men, and many female-dominated fields experiencing strong pay growth still pay far less than industries dominated by men, such as finance (54% male), medical surgery (75% male) and the legal industry (61% male). 

Elementary and middle school teachers — roughly 77% of whom are women — earn $1,042 per week, while software developers, roughly 3 in 4 of whom are men, are paid $1,920 per week. Both jobs require bachelor’s degrees, and around half of public school teachers have master’s degrees, compared to roughly 1 in 5 software developers. 

And even within those female-dominated industries, women are still often disadvantaged. Male teachers, for example, make an average of $1,161 per week, an 11% premium over women’s pay. 

One study from Cornell University, published in 2016, even found that when women enter a given industry, wages in that sector tend to fall. Between 1950 and 2000, the field of recreation — those working in parks or camps — shifted from mostly men to mostly women. During that period, wages fell 57%, the New York Times noted. Ticket agents also were primarily women during that period; their pay fell by 43%. And when more women became designers, housekeepers and biologists, their pay fell accordingly.

Computer programming, the report noted, was once a female-dominated industry and seen as a relatively menial role. "But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige," The New York Times said of the study.  

Lower-wage salaries among women are rising faster than the top salaries, so the wage gap is shrinking. But the gap remains: Women were earning an average of 62% of men’s wages in 1979; by 2019, that figure had risen to 82%. In 2022, Black women earned 70% as much as white men, while Hispanic women earned 65% as much. Asian women were "closer to parity with white men," the Pew Research Center noted, earning 93% as much as white men that year.   

Finally, while women’s discretionary spending might be rising, men still outspend women when they decide to splurge, spending around 40% more on average, a 2023 Deloitte study found. When asked to describe a splurge purchase, women said they spent around $28, while men’s splurges cost an average of $39. 

Women do spend more money than men in some categories such as clothing. However, "that also isn’t necessarily by choice," Marketplace observed, noting a 2016 study that showed the strong correlation between perceived attractiveness and income. 

"Controlling for personal grooming eliminated the beauty wage gap in women, meaning practices like daily makeup and hair maintenance significantly correlate to increased income for women," Marketplace reported. "The same was not true for men, the study found."

Why are men not OK?

As women continue to narrow the gap, overcoming systemic discrimination and disadvantages, American men are experiencing a notable social and economic decline, recorded across virtually every meaningful measure of social success. In recent years, scores of men have dropped out of the workforce entirely, and fewer are entering four-year universities, with even less graduating. Female students make up around two-thirds of college enrollees today; in the 1980s, the ratio was evenly split. 

In elementary school, high school and college, boys and men are lagging behind girls and women in academic performance. And in recent years, more men than women are overdosing, dying from alcoholism-related diseases, dying earlier and dying by suicide. 

In his 2022 book, "Of Boys and Men," British-American inequality researcher Richard V. Reeves argues that the decline of the American man is linked directly to women’s financial liberation, and our global shift to economies geared "toward brains and away from brawn." He writes that many men fear "cultural redundancy," with their status as the dominant provider threatened by women’s economic gains. 

"As far as I can tell, nobody predicted that women would overtake men so rapidly, so comprehensively, or so consistently around the world," Reeves writes in the book.

To some men, it appears that losing that status as "provider" feels existentially threatening, a sledgehammer in their carefully constructed identities built on maintaining financial power. "While this was never explicitly stated, one of Donald Trump's most obvious campaign promises to his mostly-male fan base was that he could bring American women to heel," Salon senior politics writer Amanda Marcotte observed in December. 

To be clear, conservatives have long supported policies that push women out of the workforce, but there's a newfound brazenness that calls for American women leaving the workplace to have and raise families. "Let me say very simply: I want more babies in the United States of America," said Vice President JD Vance, who’s also advocated for giving more votes to people with children. Republicans have also been pushing to end no-fault divorce laws, which women’s advocates say would be dangerous for victims of domestic violence and make it harder for women to leave abusive marriages. 

Similarly, attacks on DEI workplace policies represent a blow to the financial advancement of those who aren't white men — a sobering reminder that while some conservatives say they support the advancement of women and people of color, that support tends to dry up when those groups knock on the door of real economic power.