More Women Bring in the Big Bucks

It was recently reported that nationwide the number of women with six-figure incomes is rising at a much faster pace than for men.

About one in 18 women who work full-time earned $100,000 or more in 2009. This is a jump of 14 percent over two years ago according to the recent census results. In contrast, one in seven men made that much, up just four percent.

The swelling ranks of well-paid women workers are largely attributable to almost three decades of growth in the umber of women with the academic credentials to land good jobs. Women now outnumber men at almost every level of higher education, which three women attending college and graduate school for every two men. They get more master's degrees and more PhDs. Most law school students are women, as are almost half of all medical students.

However, women's advocates and groups representing professional women cautioned that a wage gap between the sexes remains stubbornly persistent and women are sparsely represented at the upper echelons of business. Just three percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.

The gains that women continue to make in the workplace have come amid the worst recession in decades - a downturn that has been particularly harsh for men. Median pay and hours worked fell twice as much for men as for women. The share of workers earning $50,000 and up was flat for men but rose by five percent for women.

Those figures represent an economy in which manufacturing and construction, with more male workers than women, id declining while jobs requiring the higher education at which women excel have increased

The full-time workforce remains predominantly male, with 56 million men and 42 million women. Only a relatively small segment of either sex has passed the $100,000 benchmark - about 2.4 million working women and 7. million men earn that much. But, some analysts believe that the gap between men and women who are earning more than $100.000 will narrow further, at least for one group.

A report earlier this year from a consumer marketing firm found that unmarried women in their 20s who are childless and work in cities have caught up with or are ahead of young men living in all but a handful of the nation's largest metropolitan regions.