Earlier today I showed you the high school wage premium for men, so how about seeing it for women too? The median income for women with a high school diploma is about $21,000 these days. Women who completed only grades 9-12 without graduating have a median income of about $14,000. In other words, they earn 67 cents for every dollar that high school grads earn. As with men, this penalty for being able to read and write at only a 9-10th grade level has been steady for the past three decades:
![](https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/blog_high_school_premium_women.gif)