The earnings gap between women and men in Hawaii narrowed slightly last year, although the state slipped in a national ranking of wage comparisons, according to a new report.

The median weekly earnings for women in Hawaii was $658 in 2010, 82.6 percent of the $797 earned by men, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. That was an improvement from a gap of 81.5 percent in 2009.

Nationally, women earned 81.2 percent of what their male counterparts earned last year. The gender wage gap ranged from 69.8 percent in West Virginia to 91.3 percent in Delaware.

Hawaii’s gender wage gap slipped to 18th best last year compared to the 50 states and the District of Columbia, down from 13th best in 2009.

The gap between women’s and men’s salaries in Hawaii was in the 70 percent range for most of the 1990s. The gap was as narrow as 83.3 percent in 2005 during the last economic boom, according to the BLS data. But since then improvement has been slow.

Hawaii’s situation has followed the national trend.

"We’ve seen virtually no progress in closing the gap (nationally) in the last three years, and the gap has remained stagnant over the last decade," according to a recent report issued by the National Women’s Law Center. "Although the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ban pay discrimination, the protections provided by these longstanding laws are frustrated in practice," the report’s authors wrote.

Officials at the National Women’s Law Center have called on Congress to revisit the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would strengthen and update the Equal Pay Act. The legislation passed the House in 2009, but not the Senate.

Reintroduced in April, the legislation would protect targets of wage discrimination from retaliation, provide negotiation training for women and allow employees to discuss salary information with co-workers, despite workplace rules preventing disclosure.

The BLS report also showed that the median wage for women in Hawaii last year was up 6.1 percent from $620 in 2009. That compared with a 4.7 increase for men to $797 from $761.

The report was based on data gathered by the Census Bureau in its Current Population Survey.

"The differences among the states reflect, in part, variation in the occupations and industries found in each state and in the age composition of each state’s labor force," BLS researchers wrote. "In addition, comparisons by sex are on a broad level and do not control for factors such as educational attainment, which can be significant in explaining the earnings difference."