Minimum wages are systematically lower in jobs more commonly held by women. For example, minimum wage workers in the health care sector earn substantially less than similarly skilled minimum wage workers in road transportation. The higher the male share of employment in an occupation or industry, the higher the wages for both men and women. The gender wage gap among minimum wage earners could be reduced if it was neutral with respect to the gender composition of occupations and industries.

The Mercury 13 were a group of 13 American women who were selected to privately undergo the same battery of tests as the Mercury 7 astronauts selected by NASA on April 9, 1959, for Project Mercury. Like the men, the women (who had hopes to become the first female astronauts) were tested at the famous Lovelace Foundation, but they were not part of NASA’s astronaut program and sadly never had the chance to fly to space.