In recent decades, there has been one of the most significant social changes; the economic status of women. Women have not only joined the labor-force but also enhanced their education, improved their occupational status, and economic rewards. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act. This was such growth for women all over the United States. It was the beginning of equality between men and women and that progress has continued into today’s society, with only one exception: women are still paid less than men. From the 1970s, the gap in pay has tremendously decreased due to the fact that women have made progress in the educational and workforce environments. Though, despite the hard work of men and women who try to close the gap, it has defied every effort. Many studies on worldly changes in the gender pay gap have been done by economists, who divide it into two different parts: the explained portion of the gap and the unexplained portion. The explained portion is the gender differences in characteristics that are work-related. Evidence:
In the last year, women were paid only 79% of what men received. That is a 21% gap, though, this is smaller than what women were
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This research was based on men and women who made the same educational and occupational choices and a gap in pay was still found. This gap prompts consequences for women, such as having difficulties repaying their student loans. The report has found that full-time working college graduates repaying loans one year after graduation, 53% of women compared to the 39% of men were paying more than what they could actually afford to their debt. (Forbes, The Awful Truth Behind The Gender Pay,
Lastly, take risk as another factor. Majority of the workers in nearly all the most dangerous occupations, such as iron workers and loggers, are male, and 92 percent of work-related deaths in 2012 were to men. Males are also more likely to pursue occupations where compensation is risky from year to year, such as finance and law. Research shows that average pay in such jobs is higher to compensate for the risk. Therefore, due to the fact that women and men do different type of jobs and work different hours, the gap in wage is not related to gender discrimination and feminism is again proven to be irrelevant
2.0 The Past of The Gender Pay Gap 2.1 History of The Gender Pay Gap Gender pay gap has started from a long time ago. As a result of the huge number of American women having occupations in the war industries amid World War II, the National War Labor Board prompted managers in 1942 to deliberately make "alterations which even out wage or pay rates paid to females with the rates paid to males for similar quality and amount of work on the same or comparable operations." However, at the war's end most women were pushed out of their new employments to prepare for returning veterans. Until the early 1960s, newspapers distributed separate occupations postings for men and women. Occupations were classified by sex, with the higher level job positions posted solely under "Help Wanted—Male."
Bobbit-Zeher states four identifying factors related to education which she accredits to the existence of the gap, “Gender differences on four of these measures, in particular, are implicated in the gender income gap: (1) choice of a college major, (2) skills as measured by standardized tests, (3) amount of education, and (4) selectivity of the college attended (Bobbit-Zeher, 2007, p. 4). This article is valuable in pointing out early factors which help to perpetuate the gender gap and provide a solid historical foundation for the research and scope of this thesis. This is mainly due to the consideration that the factors related to education have long been the basis for the form of discrimination that is related to this pay inequality. The
Gender equality: the pinnacle concept that American society is not-so desperately trying to achieve. Many Americans have convinced themselves that gender equality was remedied by the Nineteenth Amendment and the Second Feminist Movement, and have not considered the thousands of steps that are left on the journey. In recent years, a matter of public interest has been the gender wage gap, stating that women are earning significantly less money than men for doing an equivalent amount of work. Critics of the effort to “break the glass ceiling” claim that a pay gap does not exist, and that if it does, it is because women either do not work as hard, have to tend to their families, or hold lower paying jobs. However, the gender pay gap has been proven to exist in a variety of different forms,
Besides white women being paid less than men, more culturally diverse people are being paid even less than them. A USA today article on the gap says “The numbers were even worse for women of color, with black women earning 68% of what was paid to white men and Hispanic women’s pay amounting to just 62% of their white male peers, according to the IWPR.” click here for link. That is crazy considering segregation has ended, at least so we thought. Not only culturally diverse women, but all women are being paid less than men.
Some argue that women in America earn only 77% of what men do, dubbed the “wage gap”. This notion, however, is fallacious and stems from a hasty generalization. In America, women earn the same as men, as guaranteed by The Equal Pay Act of 1963, which bars employers from paying women or men less than their counterparts. The gender wage gap fails to realize traditional differences in the distribution of jobs between the sexes, but rather takes earnings in aggregate. There are two things wrong with this line of reasoning: areas of higher earning are traditionally majority men, and women tend to take time off to care for children, impacting earnings.
The truth regarding the gender pay gap is that it affects females from different backgrounds, ages, races and educational levels. This ongoing issue does not seem likely to go away on its own. Women, who are as equally trained and educated, with the same experience as men are not getting equal pay. In today’s society, stereotypes are generated concerning women’s capabilities and this result in discrimination. Gender discrimination in work circumstances takes on many different forms; ranging from different payments between men and women who perform the same duties equally as well as when the income of men and women and retirement savings are stacked up against their health care cost and life expectancies, women are much farther behind than men are.
Annotated Bibliography Quast, L. (2015, November 22). The Gender Pay Gap Issue Is Fixable -- But May Require Bolder Actions To Overcome. Retrieved from Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2015/11/22/the-gender-pay-gap-issue-is-fixable-but-may-require-bolder-actions-to-overcome/2/ It is reported by the Economic Policy Institute that although women had made tremendous records entering into workforce and gain great successes in education, but their wage is 83% comparing to men. The world forum also released a report in 2015 that women now make as much as men earned a decade ago.
Maybe it is not worth all the fuss to close the gap that appears to be present. “Male-dominated occupations tend to pay more than female-dominated ones (Ponnuruh, 2012, p. 15).” That being said, maybe the wage gap has something to do with the differences in pay between primarily male jobs and female jobs. To fully understand what the wage gap really is, you would have to compare the two based specifically on the same job title and same level of dedication between a man and woman. Statistics can lie, if you are not using the right information, it can appear to make something that is not accurate appear very convincing.
The disparity has been justified that women make less money than men are based on what seem to be logical reasons but According to a 2010 study done by the U.S. Census Bureau, the average of all working women earn 78% of what men makes and 64% for black women. While is is useful to look at the incomes of men and women as a whole, it still doesn’t account for things such as educational level, work experience, hours worked, and type of job. However, even when we control for these factors, the gender pay gap still exists. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released a 2014 report examining the median weekly earnings of full time wage and salary workers that took gender and job position into account.
For instance, women take unpaid leave more often than men, often to take care of newborns. Did you know that if more employers offered paid maternity leave, women are twice as likely to return back to their original employers? In fact, women’s earnings can decrease up to 7% per child that she has. Sometimes education level can be a reason for a pay gap, women with master’s degrees still only make 72% of what men with master’s degrees make. It is certain that some circumstances can somewhat explain the gender pay gap,but the rest is left to another factor, pure discrimination.
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.
Figures suggest that the gender pay gap will have an impact on women later on in life. In 1968 women were paid 87% of men’s wages, so on the 7th of June 1968 women went on strike for 3 weeks. After 3 weeks of strike the pay gap decreased and women now earn 92% of men’s wages. In 2012, it was recorded that 64% of the lowest paid workers were women and that each man earnt $6412.89 more than women per year and currently the average woman working full time received 84.3% of men’s pay. Due to the gender pay gap men currently earn considerably more money than women each year, women effectively stop earning money by early November each year.
Pay Gap: a bitter difficulty Women and men should receive the same salary for doing the same job. That is the idealistic concept that fits very well in an invented society. However, gender pay gap shows one of the worst discrimination problems nowadays. After several investigations, many factors show that women receive an inferior amount of money in comparison with men, simply due to the gender difference. Thus, the debate is on the table.
Women’s earning still lag significantly behind men. According to the Global Report survey, the United States ranks 66 out of 144 countries for having wage equality for similar work (“The Global” 356). The earning imbalance indicates that women are less likely to have higher pay than men. The wage should be measured through an individual’s performance and not by