Portside

Historical discrimination, demographics, and public funding have left home care workers at the very bottom of the American work hierarchy. The wages these workers earn are painfully low: the median salary for a personal care aide is $19,910 annually, or $9.57 an hour; a home health aide earns $20,820 or $10.01 per hour. On the Bureau of Labor Statistic's list of 30 fastest-growing jobs, personal and home care aides are the worst paid.

The problem? Male jobs pay more—way more. The median annual wage for computer programmers was $74,280 in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it was $53,400 for kindergarten teachers. Many women would need to change fields in order to make all workplaces in America have about a 50/50 gender split.