The Gender Pay Gap Starts Even Before You  Get Hired

With women overrepresented among unpaid interns, their pay often lags men’s from the very start.

Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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Nathalie Ramirez Rojas spent the spring of her junior year at Baruch College splitting her time over two equally formidable tasks: acing her exams and scouring job boards for a paid internship in the social sciences.

“I actually saw an internship when I was applying that looked perfect but when I took a closer look I realized they wanted an unpaid intern for 40 hours a week,” said Ramirez Rojas, who’s focusing her career toward mental health and hopes to work as a therapist in the future. “I thought that was insane.”