A woman makes about 80 cents for every dollar a man does, on average, but that shortfall can vary widely depending on what you do. "As much as we've kept the light on this issue, it's been essentially stagnant for two decades," said Kim Churches, CEO of the American Association of University Women, a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to advancing equity for women. Although women experience a persistent pay gap in nearly every occupation, the professions with the most significant income discrepancies are largely in the finance and medical industries, according to a new report by the AAUW.

Men's Earnings Women's Earnings Pay Ratio Collective Gap for Women in Occupation Financial managers $100,575 $65,237 65% $19,581,000,000 Physicians and surgeons $243,072 $171,880 71% $19,543,000,000 Accountants and auditors $77,320 $60,280 78% $17,293,000,000 Supervisors of retail sales workers $47,774 $35,217 74% $14,790,000,000 Registered nurses $71,590 $65,612 92% $12,509,000,000 Marketing and sales managers $100,288 $71,066 71% $11,221,000,000 Lawyers $140,270 $106,837 76% $10,704,000,000 Chief executives $148,867 $111,236 75% $10,043,000,000 Medical & health services managers $87,451 $67,129 77% $9,287,000,000 Education administrators $83,383 $64,989 78% $9,203,000,000

The median income for male financial managers is $100,575, while female financial managers make $65,237, meaning women bring home 65 percent of what their male counterparts in this role do — and lose out on roughly $19.6 billion a year. Physicians and surgeons have the second-largest wage discrepancy. Altogether, the gender pay gap results in a loss of $500 billion a year for working women, the AAUW found, based on 2017 Census data. The shift in favor of women's earning power has been pronounced in the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, according to a separate analysis by Federal Reserve economists. Still, even in computer programming jobs, women are paid 92 percent of what their male counterparts earn, the AAUW said. The smallest gaps were in lower wage professions, such as food preparation and serving workers, where women earn 99 cents on the dollar, followed by writers and authors and pharmacists, where women earn 98 percent of what their male counterparts make. The only occupation where women were paid more than men was among wholesale and retail buyers, the AAUW said.