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When It Comes to Paying Women Fairly, Oklahoma Lags Behind Other States

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When it comes to income inequality between the sexes, Oklahoma has one of the worst pay gaps in the nation, reports the Tulsa World.Full-time working women in Oklahoma earn 73 cents for every dollar a man earns. That’s six cents less per dollar than the national average. The gap in Oklahoma adds up to over six billion dollars a year that women would receive if they were paid equally.

To put the numbers in perspective, with that money women could pay for 95 more weeks of food, 10 more months of bills, and nearly 16 more months of rent.

The issue could be a factor in the upcoming elections. 88 percent of Democratic women say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports equal pay. But only 70 percent of Republican women said the same, though that number still constitutes a hefty majority. Oklahoma has the sixth-largest pay gap among states, tied with Alabama and Idaho.