<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2OcQpz_0zf6nudZ00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2OcQpz_0zf6nudZ00" width="1729" height="1199" ><figcaption>Paige Pozos is pictured standing outside Forever Flawless, her permanent cosmetics business, which she opened in 2014. Georgia Lodewyk/The Sheridan Press</figcaption></figure>SHERIDAN — Wyoming may have been the first state to allow women to vote and the first state to elect a female governor, but according to 2023 data from the Wyoming Administration &amp; Information and the National Women’s Law Center, Wyoming is one of the last when it comes to the gender wage gap.Released in February 2025, the Employment and Earnings Gap from Wyoming A&amp;I highlights some of these pay and industry disparities — for every dollar earned by men in the state, women only make 65 cents. Wyoming ranks in one of the four worst states for the gender pay gap, according to the National Women’s Law Center.Alex Shannon, the communications and events coordinator of the Wyoming Women’s Foundation, said this means women in Wyoming must work an extra four months of the year — until April — to catch up to what a man earned the previous year.“It means that we’re not really reaching our full potential,” Shannon said, citing a previous 2022 study from the organization that estimated an additional $1.5 billion could be infused into the Wyoming economy if the wage gap closed.But Shannon said solutions aren’t simple — the wage gap involves cultural and economic factors, all more complicated than just one coworker getting paid more than the other.The DataDr. Wenlin Liu, chief economist with the State of Wyoming Economic Analysis Division, said the makeup of the state’s economy is partially to blame for the wage gap.“Wyoming has one of the least diversified economies in the U.S.,” Liu said in the February report. “The wage gap between men and women, one of the largest in the country, can largely be attributed to the state’s industry composition.”According to the A&amp;I study, traditionally low-paying industries, like food services, arts, entertainment and retail trade, were dominated by female workers. Some of Wyoming’s largest and highest paying industries, like mining, quarrying, oil and gas extraction and utilities, were more than 80% male.Shannon believes the disparity is due to cultural reasons beyond the economy.“(The impact of the wage gap) comes in indirect ways, like job opportunities in general,” she said. “What is deemed ‘women’s work’ versus ‘man’s work.’”Shannon said the oil and gas industry is continuously labeled as “man’s work,” which culturally prevents women from entering that field. Additionally, jobs like child care and food services, often lower-paying professions, are often seen as “women’s work.”“A lot of it is, I think, learned behavior from the culture that we live within,” she said.The ImpactTattoo and permanent cosmetic artist Paige Pozos said she’s seen glimpses of this culture firsthand while working in a traditionally male-dominated field.In 2013, Pozos escaped an abusive relationship in California, moving to Sheridan with only her infant daughter and two suitcases.Pozos had past experience as a bar manager, but she wanted a fresh start. She entered a vocational rehab program through the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services and became a certified permanent cosmetic professional and tattoo artist. At the time, Pozos said most tattoo artists were male.“It was really hard to learn how to tattoo as a woman,” Pozos said.She was making around $20,000 a year as an apprentice, struggling to buy groceries for her and her daughter. She knew if she worked for herself, she could make twice as much money.“I basically took whatever money I was given for my education, like $5,000, and I invested it into supplies (and) rent,” Pozos said.Pozos opened Forever Flawless in 2014, a licensed permanent cosmetics and paramedical services company. But she made well over twice her salary — she made five times as much after one year in business— about $100,000.Pozos is not the only woman to go this route and see success, said Christine Langley, the business education director of the Wyoming Women’s Business Center.“When women in Wyoming consistently earn significantly less than that for the same work, they see starting a business or some kind of side gig as a way to take control of their financial future,” Langley said. “Traditional employment doesn’t always offer women the earning potential that they need, and so business ownership can become that path to equity for them, and also self-sufficiency.”The 2022 Small Business Profile for Wyoming from the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy reported women owned 23,207, or 48.3%, of Wyoming businesses.Langley said the Wyoming Women’s Business Center helps female entrepreneurs find loans, explore creative funding strategies and continue financial literacy education, because women are often at a disadvantage.“The wage gap — what it really means at the end of the day is it means that women have less capital to invest in their business from the very start,” Langley said. “If a woman is earning 25% less, 30% less than her male counterpart in traditional employment… that means she has fewer personal savings to put toward a startup business.”Langley said the roots of this stem even further back, as up until the late 20th century, females did not have a substantial place in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Women weren’t even permitted to open a bank account, apply for a credit card or get a home loan without a husband’s approval until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974. Langley said this lack of presence, and the wage disparity, has set women back compared to their male counterparts.“As a business counselor, I can’t fix the wage gap,” Langley said. “But what I can do is I can advise women toward the resources that are available to them.”The SolutionShannon said it will require an entire cultural shift to shrink the wage gap.“I’d like to think that changing the narrative about women and the work women do as being valuable and critical would help in those scenarios,” she said.The Wyoming A&amp;I study reported health care and social assistance, finance and insurance and educational services were other female-dominated industries in Wyoming in 2023.“We see jobs like child care being massively devalued and health care being massively devalued,” Shannon said. “Historically, you can actually see that health care wages went down when women took over that industry.”In child care specifically, Wyoming has struggled with understaffing, with a shortage of day care facilities and statistically low wages for its workers. In 2023, most child care workers made around $30,050 per year, according to 2023 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to U.S. Census data, the average 2023 per capita income in Sheridan was more than $9,000 higher at $39,180.In health care, staff shortages in nursing home employees, mental health care workers and certified nursing assistants continue to plague Wyoming’s medical systems, according to past reporting from The Sheridan Press.Shannon thinks this dynamic could shift soon.“With child care being so limited in Wyoming and health care being so limited in Wyoming, we’re kind of reaching a point where we’re going to have to pay them if we want these resources to be available,” she said. “I think that could be helpful, just recognizing that these are incredibly valuable services and we need to fund them appropriately.”Langley said change is long term, and it starts with a greater representation of women in government and leadership roles in the workforce.“The more women that have a seat at the table in both corporate America and government, the more it is likely to change going forward,” she said.This story was published on March 11, 2025.</div></body>

Block Source: wyomingnewsnow.tv

Misinformation

Clickbait

Old or repetitive news

Explicit content

Location not relevant

SHERIDAN — Wyoming may have been the first state to allow women to vote and the first state to elect a female governor, but according to 2023 data from the Wyoming Administration & Information and the National Women’s Law Center, Wyoming is one of the last when it comes to the gender wage gap.

Unequal pay in the Equality State

NewsBreak

SHERIDAN — Wyoming may have been the first state to allow women to vote and the first state to elect a female governor, but according to 2023 data from the

Unequal pay in the Equality State

Comments / 38