The Enormous Income Gap Due to Gender Did you know that the average woman earns 78 cents to the average man’s dollar? This is just one of many alarming statistics on the inequality of men and women’s income. There is currently an extremely large gap between the income of men and women. For a long time, women have been treated unfairly in a wide range of jobs. Men are given more opportunities, options and respect in the workplace. More importantly, they often receive higher pay than their female co-workers. This important Social Justice issue needs to be addressed because women deserve to be paid the exact same amount as men. All female workers’s rights are being violated when they are paid less than males due to their gender. According to …show more content…
Consequently, both participative and distributive barriers are being created. When a specific group is earning less than another, not only are they receiving less, they also cannot contribute to the community or the workforce as efficiently. This is why this issue is creating both participative and distributive barriers for women. According to Forbes, there are currently 1,826 total billionaires and 197 of them are women. The fact that only 11% of them are female directly relates to this issue. Both genders work equally, yet somehow there are almost nine times as many male billionaires in the world as female ones. People of higher socioeconomic status in our society can contribute much more than people of lower status. Even though women continue to struggle with receiving equal pay, there are some institutions put in place to solve this …show more content…
According to them, “For more than four decades, NWLC has worked to close the wage gap and ensure that male and female employees get equal pay and benefits for comparable work. The Center has dramatically changed the workplace for women by successfully pushing for laws that could bring about pay equity for women. But there's still much more to be done”. Institutions like these are put in place to provide support for women earning less income than they deserve. In addition, a solution to this economic justice issue would be to increase the minimum wage. This would help because over two-thirds of low wage workers are female. If these minimum wage workers earned more, the gap would
In 2009 President Obama signed into law the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (The Whitehouse, n.d.). The major provisions of this Act prohibits wage discrimination based on sex, race, or national origin among employees for work in equivalent jobs. According to National Committee on Pay Equity (n.d.), the Act defines “equivalent jobs are those who’s composite of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions are equivalent in value, even if the jobs are dissimilar.” Today women earn roughly seventy-nine cents for every dollar earned by men. Atchinson, Belcher, and Thornsen (2013) state that women have entered the workforce not only because of increased educational opportunities but also because of the need for two paychecks in many families
In the U.S., intersectionality is highly prevalent. For example, men with children have better chances of getting a job and receiving a larger compensation than women with children (Steinem 2014). The notion that men get paid more than women should not be new to anyone, and the idea that women with children are somehow less qualified than men with children is astonishing. This mindset may also support the glass ceiling issue that some women still face. Equal pay continues to be an ever-challenging uphill battle for women in the U.S. today.
Since Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, it seems like the majority of the problem has been fixed. Catherine Hill, Ph.D., the vice president for research at the American Association of University Women wrote how the pay gap in the United States “affects women of all ages, races, and education levels”. Even if a woman has a Doctoral degree, lives in Washington D.C., and is Caucasian, the pay gap still exists. A man with that same backround would still be making more money yearly. However smaller the gender pay gap is becoming, it is obvious that it still exists, and it proves that discrimination also exists in America
The unequal pay of women is a pure form of discrimination. A presentation titled ‘In Tech Field, Women Struggle for Equal Pay’ by CBS Chicago supports the claims that women are underpaid in technical professions such as accounting. The fact that women are not treated as equals despite the fact that they work as hard as women is a form of discrimination in
Gender Inequality Imagine you are a women working the same hours as a male coworker, you put the same effort into your quality work, but when you gets your paycheck you still earn less than him. We could change this problem and make sure that all genders get equal pay for the amount of work they do. There is a wage gap between genders even though they work the same job and hours the women will get payed less. The gaps are impacted the most by ethnicity, sexuality, and of course gender.
Many women in the working world are not paid in the same amount as their male counterpart. Many women who work are paid much
Women working for the Texas state government suffer wage inequality because all women are held to the expectation that they will leave work to have a baby. Women can make the decision on whether they will or will not have kids, but because their colleagues do plan on having kids or are pregnant they all are held at a certain pay. When hiring women there is this doubt that they will stay the entire time and that it will be a permanent job so the employer does not feel a need to give them an equal pay compared to a man doing the same job. The reality of wage differences between men and women is that above all changes women still get paid less than men. There have been countless arguments that wage inequality has been fixed and that everyone
The gender wage gap persists. Women make up half of the U.S labor force and are a growing number of breadwinners in their families. More women are also working in positions and fields that have been traditionally occupied by men. Women not being paid fairly not only affect them, but also their families. “Despite passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which requires that men and women in the same work place be given equal pay for equal work, the gender gap in pay still remains.”
Women should request a twenty percent pay increase to even up the gender pay gap. In most jobs women earn eighty cents for every dollar a man earns for the exact same job. Employers should pay good, qualified women, who can competently perform their job duties, the same wages they pay men for the same work. Earning twenty percent less is a significant amount and it adds up over time. Throughout the years the pay gap has narrowed but it’s still not equal pay for equal work.
Gender Inequality Why Women's Rights are an Important Social Justice Issue Malala Yousefzai once said, “I raise up my voice-not so I can shout but so that those without a voice can be heard...we cannot succeed when half of us are held back.” Did you know the pay gap between men and women will, over the course of a woman's life time, cost a women and her family lost wages? Women's rights have started to get better, but not enough. For example, the US is one of only four countries in the world that doesn't give paid maternity leave. Also, the US is 65th on the list of women's wages.
The Equal Means Equal documentary film by (name) (2016) states, “Compared to white men, white women working full time, based on median annual full-time earnings, earn 78 cents to every dollar a man earns. African American women make 64 cents, and Latina, 54 cents. Depending on the year, that pay may rise a couple of pennies, but not because women wages have increased but because men’s have stagnated or declined.” Seventy-eight cents to a dollar is very discouraging and proves hard work does not pay off. Over the course of my career, I have experienced gender
Income inequality doesn’t just stop at race. It is also quite apparent that there is financial discrimination against females in the workplace. Although we have improved as a country, gender income inequality remains a large issue today. The median income of male workers is $783 dollars less than it was 42 years ago. The median income of a female worker is $1,300 less than it was in
Among other factors, socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity significantly impact the opportunities available to individuals. Children born into wealthier families simply have more opportunities than children born into poorer ones, and today, income inequality between the upper, middle, and lower classes has reached an all-time high. In 1976, 9% of income went to the top 1%. Today, 24% of income goes to the top 1%. The bottom 80% of Americans own only 7% of the country’s wealth today, while the top 1% has 40% of its wealth.
Wage inequality is just one of the many issues that women face in this lifetime. As a woman in a male-dominated society, I feel there are a lot of things in terms of equality we can change. But to completely and efficiently address these issues, we need to focus on one at a time. While we have come a long way in shattering the inferiority complex plaguing women, the glaring matter of wage gap, until addressed, will force women into a category of the lesser sex. If I could solve any problem I would solve the problem of unequal pay between men and women.
Why do we allow society to determine our level of success? Today inequality is the highest it has been since 1928(Desilver). There is a wide income gap between rich and poor(Desilver). Success is thought to be earning a high income, being married, or based on your demographics. We as individuals are treated better or worse based off of how people characterize or categorize others.