Over the last decade, even as the Dallas-Fort Worth economy has grown over 75% and median incomes rose nearly 60%, the gender wage gap has persisted and even worsened, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis of census data.
D-FW had the widest gap in the U.S. among metros with a population over 5 million.
In 2024, D-FW women recorded a median income $16,600 less than men. In other words, for every dollar a man earned, a woman earned 72 cents.
Breaking News
While this is on par with the statewide gender pay gap, it is wider than the pay gap in other Texas metros such as Houston and Austin where women earned 74 cents to the dollar, or San Antonio, where women earned 76 cents.
The gap widened after the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 gender gap in D-FW’s median income was about $12,700, or 74 cents to the dollar.
Frisco, with a gap of $52,216 or 56 cents to the dollar, holds the widest gender pay gap among 170 large cities across the country. McKinney and Plano follow suit with a gap of over $20,000 annually, or 72 cents to the dollar.
The gulf in earnings for men and women continues even as more women are joining the workforce. Since 2014, labor force participation among D-FW women has grown 3 percentage points to 63%, The News found. The metroplex today has 2.1 million women in the workforce — the largest in the state.
According to a report by the Texas Women’s Foundation, more than a million women joined the Texas workforce in the last decade and account for 46% of the state’s workers today.
Texas women are outpacing men in higher education enrollment and academic achievement, yet the wage gap widens as women achieve advanced degrees, according to the report. While most women remain concentrated in lower-paying jobs, those with graduate or professional degrees earn an average of $37,000 less annually.
The data cuts across industries, and the gap widens for Black and Hispanic women even though women of color form 60% of females in the Texas workforce.
“So what’s incentivizing us if we are going to make considerably less than our male counterparts the more educated we get?” asked Karen Hughes White, president and CEO of the Texas Women’s Foundation.
Over the course of a woman’s lifetime, economic losses from the wage gap amount to nearly $750,000, according to estimates by the Texas Women’s Foundation.
“That’s money left on the table that could buy a house and send kids to college,” White said.
Gender imbalances in a promising STEM economy
The arrival of tech companies accounts for much of North Texas’ rapid income growth in the past decade and the industry’s imbalances in gender representation and pay parity have followed suit.
On average, U.S. women make up about 26% of all tech workers and earn roughly 84% of what men do, according to a SmartAsset study of 59 cities published in August 2025.
Dallas, Irving and Plano ranked in the bottom half for gender pay parity. Women across North Texas represent a quarter or less of the tech workforce, except in Fort Worth, where their representation is slightly higher at 27% and the pay gap is lower than the national average.
Saki Milton, Gems Camp founder and director, holds up division equation flashcards while after-school program students solve them on whiteboards at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center on Jan. 12, 2026.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
The gap starts early, said Saki Milton, founder and executive director of The GEMS Camp, which focuses on increasing access to STEM careers for underprivileged girls in the Dallas area.
“We have to present girls with role models,” she said. If young girls of color do not see women of color in higher-paying STEM fields and education programs, it impacts their sense of belonging, she said, “and the aspirational aspect goes away.”
“As more women start to get degrees in fields they weren’t part of, the more we’ll start to close that gap,” said Lynn McBee, CEO of Young Women’s Preparatory Network, the nation’s largest public, all‑girls, STEM‑focused college‑prep organization.
As more women enter higher‑paying fields, including STEM, McBee, who also serves as the city of Dallas’ workforce development czar, says wages will increase, especially as pipelines mature and as training aligns with employer demand.
Change takes time, she stressed.
She traced today’s gains to slow shifts since Title IX — the 1972 federal civil rights law against sex discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal funding. This helped open academic and career pathways for women.
“That was 53 years ago,” she said. “It takes time to reverse course on something that has not been the norm for decades, or generations, if you will.”
Women remain overrepresented in health care, education and social service jobs, the Texas Women’s Foundation found in its study. Karen Hughes White of the foundation says these infrastructure jobs “really hold up the entire economy.”
Yet there is a persistent ideology that women shouldn’t get paid for their work, Milton said. “That they should be at home with their families.”
This attitude keeps women at a lower pay and deters the enforcement of policies that could initiate change, Milton said. “I’m not saying that companies haven’t made strides forward to address it. But we need to step it up.”
In the 2025 legislative session, McBee said more money was put into upskilling and workforce. “And so the idea is we just get more people, more women, more everybody, getting through, and so I think downstream, there will be some effects,” she said.
The Texas Workforce Commission shared with The News details about workforce programs such as apprenticeships, adult education and child care for eligible low- and moderate-income families.
The lack of policy directly aimed at supporting women in the workplace alongside transparency in promotions and pay hinder an equitable workforce, Milton said. “Especially in the private sector where most people work, because you can’t solve a problem if you don’t see it.”
Mentorship, pay transparency and benefits to retain mothers
Kate Rose Marquez, CEO of Ascend Dallas, a nonprofit focused on empowering women and fighting poverty, said the issue “has to be in the front of people’s minds in conversations when it comes to company practices.”
“You have to create the uncomfortable conversations, and refuse to stop having them, so that it doesn’t just slide away,” she said.
Training and mentorships accelerate advancement, and financial literacy gives women the flexibility to pursue higher‑paid roles, she said.
In the absence of government policy, advocates said companies should take on the mantle of promoting equal pay.
Photos of the Hidden Gems girls STEM after-school program
View Gallery
Many women do not negotiate for better pay when offered a job, Milton said, because they don’t realize they can. “They think, ‘Oh, I got a good job paying $70,000,’ ” she said, “Well, did you know the guy who works on your team who does the same job as you is paid $90,000?”
Milton urges reasonable legislation to incentivize employers to publish pay scales.
“Teach them the lay of the land, the ways of working, and the skills to negotiate a fair salary,” she said. “This way women know what to do going into these roles and can then better prepare to negotiate.”
Marquez said the gap is not only about hourly pay. Women, many of whom are heads of single-parent households, need better access to benefits such as health insurance, paid time off, child care support and education benefits that may be difficult to secure in lower-paying jobs.
“These are barriers unique to women that can stunt an opportunity before it’s even given,” White said.
At the state level, the gap may cost Texas more than $47 billion annually, according to the Texas Women’s Foundation. When women aren’t earning as much, they aren’t pouring as much money back into the economy, White said.
By 2040, their report estimates women will take over as the majority of the state workforce.
“Texas, and North Texas, are an economic powerhouse that in many ways are powered by its women,” White said. “So you really have to step back and take that holistic look at what women want and need to work fully, consistently and productively.”
McBee said retaining women through childbirth and caregiving is critical and requires employer policies that support parental return without penalty.
“What is that company doing to promote work-life, family-life, balance? Is it something that will not hinder the woman from coming back to the workforce after childbirth or slow her down?” McBee asked. “If we could see companies starting to do some of those, then I think it’s going to start to relieve women of having to feel like they walk away to take care of their kids.”
Marquez highlighted a recent example where Ascend Dallas worked with a single mother of five to help her move to a $22‑an‑hour job with benefits at Bank of America. “She later earned another raise, and for the first time could take paid time off to stay home and care for her child when they fell ill,” Marquez said.
Child care is the No. 1 barrier to advancing, Marquez stressed.
“There’s those biases where people go … ‘I’m going to hire the guy, or I’m going to promote the guy [instead] because she’s a single mom, and she’s going to be who’s taking care of her kid.’”
To curb this possibility in her own hiring process, Marquez reviews resumes without names during the initial screening.
“There has to be an agreement in our corporate culture on how we’re going to hire, promote, mentor,” she said.
“And we have to decide it’s not going to be a good old boys club.”
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.