Although women have made great strides in education and income, a large pay gap between the sexes still exists.

According to data supplied by the U.S. Census Bureau, the average annual national income for men in 2006 was $42,261, compared with $32,515 earned by women. That is a difference of almost $10,000 for female-to-male earnings, or 77 percent, the highest in 48 years of data collection.

There was a decline in median earnings for both men and women between 2005 and 2006 from $42,743 for men and $32,903 for women, but the difference between the genders remained about the same.

"The nature of the labor force has given women [an income] boost, while men stayed flat or moved down," said William Frey, an internationally known demographer at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., and specialist in issues

involving the U.S. Census Bureau. "The economy and change in the nature of jobs has affected the nature of the gender gap, but it still exists today."

In Georgia, a pay gap can be found, but it is smaller than the gap nationwide, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Still, the state's pay gap was larger in 2006 than in the two previous years.

Reports show that in 2006, Georgia men earned $36,088 compared to $30,472 by women, a difference of $5,616 for female-to-male earnings.

In 2005, men in the state earned $34,736, the same as it had been in 2004. The state's women, though, saw an increase from $29,692 in 2004 to $30,368 in 2005.

Female-to-male earnings in Georgia increased from 85.4 percent in 2004 to 87.4 percent in 2005, but decreased to 84.4 percent in 2006.

Nationally, the gap between the sexes was much wider during the mid-1970s, when women earned almost half of what men did.

Women earned about $25,000, compared with almost $45,000 for men, according to Census Bureau data. (Earnings are based on 2006 dollars.)

The gap started to close significantly during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the recession of 1990 saw men's income decrease from about $44,000 to about $41,000 and women's income increase from about $24,000 to just under $30,000.

The U.S. Census Bureau has been tracking full-time income on the national level since 1959 and compares incomes earned by men and women.