In honor of National Women's History Month

Women have made tremendous strides in the business world and there is no greater time than now to highlight women in the world of work, finance and business.

The median annual earnings of women ages 16 and older who work full time, year-round is $32,168, in 2005. Women earned 77 cents for every $1 earned by men.
- In the District of Columbia, women who worked year-round, full-time earned 91 cents for every $1 their male counterparts earned in 2005. Among all states or state equivalents, the district was where women were closest to earnings parity with men. Maryland and Connecticut were the only states where median earnings for women were above $40,000, as was the District of Columbia.
- The median earnings of women working in computer and mathematical jobs, $58,906, the highest for women among the 22 major occupational groups. Among these groups, community and social services was the only group where women's earnings as a percentage of men's earnings were higher than 90 percent.
- The estimated work-life earnings of women with a professional degree (i.e., medical, law, dental or veterinarian) who work full time, year-round is $2.9 million. For women, like men, more education means higher career earnings. It is estimated that women without a high school diploma would earn $700,000 during their work lives, increasing to $1 million if they had a high school diploma and $1.6 million if they had a bachelor's degree.
- The amount women, who worked full time, year-round, earned 77 cents for every $1 their male counterparts earned in 2004. This amount is up from 76 cents for every dollar in 2003.
- The revenue for women-owned businesses reaped more than $939 billion in 2002, up 15 percent from 1997. There were 116,985 women-owned firms with receipts of $1 million or more.
- The number of women-owned businesses climbed to nearly 6.5 million in 2002, up 20 percent from 1997. (The increase was twice the national average for all businesses.) Women owned 28 percent of all non-farm businesses.
- More than 7.1 million people were employed by women-owned businesses. There were 7,231 women-owned firms with 100 or more employees, generating $274 billion in gross receipts.
NOTE: Nearly one in three women-owned firms operated in health care and social assistance, and other services such as personal services, and repair and maintenance. Women owned 72 percent of social assistance businesses and just over half of nursing and residential care facilities. Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 38.2 percent of women-owned business revenue.
- The average rate of growth in women-owned firms in Nevada reached 43% between 1997 and 2002, which led the nation. Georgia (35 percent), Florida (29 percent) and New York (28 percent) followed.
- Women 16 or older who participated in the labor force in 2005 equalled 59%. This amounts to 69.3 million women, 35 million of which were full-time, year-round jobs. Men in this range amounted to a 73% rate of participation.
- In a management, professional or related occupations, women chipped in 37 percent of the work force, as compared to 31% of men.
- More women work in educational services, health care and social assistance industries than in any other, the total amounting to 21.1 million. Breaking it down further, 10.7 million work in the health care industry and 8 million in educational services.