NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Wide disparities in income still exist between white men and women, especially women of racial minorities, a report released Tuesday showed.

Amy Caiazza from the Institute for Women's Policy Research tells CNNfn that pay disparities between women and men still exist. Play video (Real or Windows Media)

"With median annual earnings of $30,100 women in the United States still earn only 76.2 percent of what men earn," according to "The Status of Women in the United States," published by the non-profit Institute for Women's Policy Research.

The wage gap between Asian-American women and white men, however, isn't as pronounced as that of other women workers, and Asian-American women are likely to earn more than other women.

Asian-American women earned an average of $33,100 in 1999, compared to $44,200 for white men and $30,900 for white women, making them the most highly paid female subgroup.

African-American women trailed both Asian-American and white women with $27,600, while Native-American women took home $25,500 and Hispanic women made $23,200.

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But pay disparities within each racial group highlighted race-specific problems. Vietnamese-Americans, for example, earned an average of $26,500 versus the $39,300 Japanese-American women make. Asian immigrants also tend to earn less than those born in the United States due to differences in educational attainment and language skills.

Similar ethnic-based disparities also exist within the Native-American and Hispanic communities.

Much of the data used in the report was taken from the 2000 census, making 1999 the most recent year measured.

"We feel the data is still quite relative, substantively," said Heidi Hartmann, IWPR's president and CEO. "Most labor market [indicators] really don't change that rapidly so even the truth of it is still fairly accurate. People's relative standings--one group to the other--those kind of things don't change very much from year to year."

Women in managerial and professional positions, as well as those who own their own businesses, tend to have greater job flexibility and higher pay, providing them with a level of economic security women employed in service jobs don't have.

Among women, Asian-Americans are most likely to work in managerial and professional roles (41.4 percent) and Hispanic women are least likely do to so (22.9 percent). Nearly 39 percent of all white women are in managerial or professional jobs versus 30 percent for Native-Americans and 29.7 percent for African-Americans.

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But women as a whole are gaining more access to managerial and professional positions thanks to better educational opportunities and employers' willingness to promote them to positions of responsibility and authority. Roughly 29 percent of all women hold these types of positions, versus 33.2 percent of men.

Yet women who work in higher-paid positions are rarely among the company's top-earners. The report referenced a 2002 Catalyst study that showed only 118, or 5.2 percent, of the highest-earning high-level executives at Fortune 500 companies were women.

The report concludes with several policy recommendations, including stronger enforcement of equal opportunity laws. This particular recommendation is key, as "employers would have greater incentives to improve their employment practices," thereby providing an immediate remedy for such discrepancies.

A more comprehensive report will be released in November.