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Women continue to earn less than men, for a variety of reasons. Discrimination is one, research shows. Women are also likelier than men to work in lower-paying jobs like those in public service, caregiving and the nonprofit sector - and to take time off for children. Employers often base a starting salary on someone's previous one, so at each job, the gender pay gap continues, and it becomes seemingly impossible for women to catch up. Salary history bans are too new for researchers to have studied their effects extensively. But other research has found that people are overly influenced by an opening bid, something social scientists call anchoring bias. This means that if employers learn an applicant's previous salary and it's lower or higher than they were planning to offer, it's likely to influence their offer.