Gender Based Wage Gap

It is unacceptable that a whole group of people receive less money simply because of their gender and we have to change this fact if we wish to be competitive in the world today. For example, we have made some progress in addressing this issue, in late January of 2009; President Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This law sought to help address the unequal pay gap by restoring the protection against pay discrimination that was taken away by the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2007 case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. While this law certainly was a step in the right direction, it did not go far enough to fully fix this problem in our society.

The working status of women has fluctuated greatly in America’s history, with jobs being denied to and kept from them. At this point, women have mostly secured their place in the job market, but there are other obstacles that remain; for example, the wage gap still persists, and while women can work alongside men, they are still seen as being inferior to them. Due to these negative factors, working women are not only expected to happily work alongside men - they are expected to work harder than them to prove their place. This higher expectation has lead to negative effects in women’s history, socioeconomic relations, and their health.

The idea of the wage gap has been used to strengthen the need for feminism by convincing people that there is still sexism in the work place that can be fixed with a protest or a bill, although I will admit that there is sexism is the workforce, as of now it is not something that can be easily fixed with a bill, being that the sexism that is left is all just person to person and what the employers opinion

“According to the social security administration, women's average annual pay in 1937 was $525, compared with $1,027 for men” (“Working women in the 1930s”). This illustrates the huge wealth gap between women and men. Shows that women not only worked long hours, but also were paid less. Eleanor Roosevelt noted, “practically every woman, whether she is rich or poor, is facing today a reduction of income” (Ware). Proves that even rich women were treated unfairly when it came to wages.

Women and men deserve to be treated, and paid, equally. Sure, they are biologically different, and both genders have something they do better than the other, but this hasn 't stopped women from getting to the same level as men. Overall, one gender is not better than the other. We are one and the same. If women and men are doing the exact same job and have equal qualifications, then they shouldn 't be titled as inferior.

Even though women 's lives improved during the 1920s in many ways, they still faced inequality in the workplace. Women gained the right to vote and new freedom in the 1920 's, but they were still discriminated against in the workplace. They were prevented from most well-paying jobs and middle and upper-class white women were expected to stay home instead. Most poorer women still held jobs that were low paying and struggled to work to support themselves and their families. Women worked longer hours and got paid significantly less than men did.

Most of the time, women had no other choice but to work. Today, women have achieved positions that would not have been possible in the 1930's. From The Great Depression, women should evaluate the evolution of the average "Rosie The Riveter"; for without her, the symbol of hope would just be a fairytale. Also, women should learn ways that can benefit our community. With a "can-do" attitude, women and men can achieve their success, it just takes hard work.

At times companies may profile women and assume at some point in their career they are going to have and raise children. Due to this assumption the company will invest less human capital in women, which is less training, maybe not promoting them or giving them responsibility etc. Thus, in dual income families when a couple does decide to have children a caregiver is usually picked, this job is usually given to the spouse who makes less income as the spouse who makes more is seen as a more valuable asset to the family. So in the end because of this the profiling company creates self fulfilling prophesies by paying women less they are pigeonholed into giving up their jobs when a family does come into the picture. Understanding the laws surrounding discrimination is important for HR personnel in that as an HR representative future graduates will be giving advice based on current laws and creating/enforcing policy

More importantly, employers depriving women of the right for equal pay, solely, because the employee is a woman is discriminatory based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A twenty percent difference adds up quickly, for example, according to Kathryn Vasel, “Woman working

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the intelligence testing practice of the Duke Power Company. The Supreme Court decision secures that employees may challenge not only overt discrimination but also job-selection procedures that are irrelevant to quantify job capability. In addition, according to the Cindy Hounsell (2002) report, “Women in U.S., on average, earn 72 cents to every dollar earned by men. In her lifetime the average women loses $523,000 due to wage disparities. Since 1987 women owned businesses have increased by 103 percent.

Therefore, helping poverty is a major demand in the country due to a large group of impoverished people, and increase the minimum wage is beneficial to poverty people and also low paid workers. We can see that in the news or in some neighborhood, poverty people don’t have a good live because they can only or even can’t fulfil their basic needs. Increase minimum wage can improve their quality of living, because they have extra money to spend and fulfil their needs. Helping poverty people and increasing their income can absolutely reduce the group size of poverty. It is a good sign in every country, especially the United States, because there are 46.7 million people in poverty and this number had been increased past several years (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015).

Many conclusions of research have stated that raising the minimum wage will unlikely ease poverty, while some states say that raising the minimum wage will help lower-skilled workers out of poverty. The minimum wage of the United States is $7.25 per hour. Most people start out with a minimum wage and eventually move to higher paying jobs in the future. Those who have minimum wage careers are usually mothers of young children, less educated, or live outside urban areas. Minimum wage increases have lead people to poverty, having a negative impact on society; therefore minimum wages should not be increased.

Women earn on average 78 cents for every dollar that a men earn. This gender pay gap needs to be closed because unequal pay affects women’s pensions or retirement income, women need to provide for their families, and lower wages for women affect men too. The unequal pay that women experience affects their finances in the long run. Many women need to take time off because they are mothers for instance and they cannot work full time.

The gender wage gap is outrageous. That gap is still significantly large in America, despite efforts that have been going on for decades to eliminate it. Women simply receive substantially less than men in this country. They are being discriminated against, and there is so much evidence to prove this. We cannot let them dismiss the evidence any longer.

The Bureau of Labor provides the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by detailed occupation and sex which in turn shows that averagely, women make eighty-two cents to every dollar a man makes based on occupation and work time. Although there is a 20% gap and may seem significant, it is clear that it is possible to keep in mind that this is merely based on occupation and full work time, not on experience or-or how long someone has worked at their job. According to a March report from the NWLC (National Women 's Law Center), “The pay gap means women lose around $10,470 in median earnings a year” (CNN Money paragraph. 2). When accounting for part-time jobs, it also contributes to the gap, as the Pew Research Center states when determining the how part-time workers contribute to the gap, “...women are twice as likely as men—26% versus 13%—to work part-time” (paragraph 2). From all these factors, this still does not determine that this fall upon sexism or discrimination in the workforce.