At the time of this writing it is the middle of 2016.

Much has changed and progressed since gender roles were commonly accepted in western societies. Women have risen out of their “place in the home” and have joined the workforce.

Women are actively recruited. They fought for equality and won.

Or have they? The ultimate denominator when it comes to the equality argument is compensation. And, from the looks of it the conversation about equal pay is far from over.

Job-hunting website Glassdoor recently pulled data from 500,000 workers in the US and revealed some astounding, but maybe unsurprising, figures. The first figure is 76.

In general, women earned 76 cents for every dollar earned by men.

There are many out there that will look at this figure and exclaim I knew it!

However, to give the argument some context the figures also show that the “pay gap” actually shrinks when comparing men and women with the same age, level of experience and education.

But, no rejoicing can be had as the figures also show in a side-by-side comparison (same company, location and job title) women still earn less than men (approximately 94.6 cents for every dollar earned by men).

Some may point the blame at the American culture or at capitalism, but the trend holds true for several western countries.

Australia, Germany, France, and the UK all posted figures similar to that found in the US workforce.

Another factor to consider may be the type of occupation.

It has been shown that certain occupations, in general, pay men more than women such as computer programming.

However, occupations do exist in which women are traditionally paid more than men such as social work.

There is one solid figure, however, and that is the highest paying jobs are almost always in male-dominated fields.

As a whole, women may have broken through the glass ceiling, but to say that they have bridged the pay gap would be very much incorrect and ignorant to the fact that much more work still needs to be done to bring equality to the workforce.