BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2014 How much do you know about the places you spend your money or the people your money goes to?<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing intentional about it, I think, is really important,\u201d said Jamilia Poles, operational manager of Third Space Cafe and Entertainment, a woman-owned business.<\/p>\n
These are questions that come to mind, as the gender pay gap widened for the second year in a row in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does make you feel defeated sometimes,\u201d Poles said.<\/p>\n
Recent Census Bureau data found that in 2024, women working full-time, year-round earned 81 cents for every dollar that men earn.<\/p>\n
That gap was 83 cents in 2023 and 84 cents the year before.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we strike that and look at part-time employment, women are making significantly less. I think it’s about 76 cents to what men make working part-time,\u201d said Sherri Scavone, CEO of the Western New York Women\u2019s Foundation.<\/p>\n
In New York, the numbers are higher than the national average, with women working full-time, year-round paid 91.4 cents for every dollar that men were paid in 2024, according to the state Department of Labor.<\/p>\n
And while New York had the smallest wage gap in the nation that year, the truth is, it is still a gap that all New York communities face.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat initial gap we talked about in Western New York, in Erie County, is about $12,000. That’s eight months of child care. That’s 23 months of of groceries. That’s 11 months of of rent,”\u00a0Scavone said. “So these are very real consequences that are holding women back from being able to thrive in our community and holding our economy back, quite frankly.”<\/p>\n
But answering the question of “why?” can be complicated.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at, number one, enforcement of the law, but also looking just at the biases that exist sometimes of no fault of anyone’s, right,\u201d said Scavone.<\/p>\n
As a result, more women are choosing to leave the workforce completely, at a more rapid rate than anytime in the last 40 years, according to the Western New York Women\u2019s foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen are saying, now I’m either going to leave the workforce and do something different, start my own business, or I’m going to leave the workforce because paying for child care or finding child care doesn’t make it worth it for me to work,\u201d said Scavone.<\/p>\n
And experts say closing the gap is going to take all hands on deck to enforce equity laws and create a more supportive system.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother used to always say there is strength in numbers. So when it comes to feminist issues, the men need to be supportive. When it comes to Black and brown issues, the others need to be supportive. That’s how we get stuff done,\u201d said Poles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2014 How much do you know about the places you spend your money or the people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3478,113,288,3365,26008,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,108,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-184683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-app-local-business","9":"tag-buffalo","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-halena-sepulveda","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-new-york-state","17":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","18":"tag-new-york-state-news","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","21":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}