Katie Bardaro, from Pay Scale Human Capital, once said “The real issue here is not the gender wage gap, but the jobs wage gap. People are filling positions according to gender, with higher-paid positions being filled by men and lower-paid positions being filled by women. That needs to change” In addition, men and women have differences on how they get paid. People think that men should get paid more because they think that they can do so much more, when women can do the same amount as a man can. Although we live in a society where men earn more money for the same job, this gender gap needs to stop, because equal pay can end poverty for single mothers, makes it harder to provide for family, and can overall will help society.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that single women who have never married earned 96 percent of men's earnings in 2012. When children comes into the picture, women tend to spend less time at work than men, furthermore, child care takes mothers out of the labor market, so when they return they have less work experience than similarly-aged males. Education also affects the wage gap. According to research studies, even within groups with the same educational attainment, women often choose fields of study, such as sociology, liberal arts or psychology, that pay less in the labor market. Men are more likely to major in finance, accounting or engineering. 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
However, the pay gap statistics present a much different story because the pay differs not only in gender but also in race. Caucasian women have the smallest of the gender pay gap difference, but other races are getting hit harder by the wage gap. According to the article “Latina Women Earn 60 Cents for Every Dollar Paid to Men,” Emily Deruy states that nationally “Latinas earn about $19,200 less per year than men.” As evidence shown in the article “African American Women Disproportionately Suffer from the Wage Gap,” by Linda Meric proves, African American women are the ones that are affected the most by the pay gap because they make “Sixty-four cents […] to every dollar earned by white men, the highest earners.” These statistics show the gender pay gap is also dependent on race. In her article, Deruy quotes the president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, Debra L. Ness as saying “that the wage gap is costing women of color thousands of dollars in critical income each year that could be spent on food, rent, healthcare and on meeting other fundamental needs for their families.” If the Paycheck Fairness Act were to pass, in addition to ending discrimination based on gender it would also end discrimination against
The wage gap disparity against women and racial groups is extremely important to acknowledge because it is a violation of equal rights. Not only unequal pay disparity against women is discrimination, but it also discriminatory based on race. The pay gap also affects the economy and society. How does unequal gender pay affect society, women would not feel discriminate and the economy will be better. Poverty levels for all working women would be cut in half, falling from 8.0 percent to 3.8 percent (Institute for Women’s Policy Research). Also, the poverty levels in minority groups will drop if pay gap disparities fades due to racial discrimination. Although, a lot has changed ever since women decided to fight for equality among
But she then says that “men are making more than women. Period,” (Wallace). This leaves the reader to believe that Wallace is right and the opposing argument is false. Sara Glynn’s and Jane Ferrell’s article “The gender Pay Gap: 2014; Earnings Differences by Race and Ethnicity” shows how race/ethnicity plays a part in the wage inequality. The article opens with a fact of Caucasian women earn only 81 percent of their male counterparts. They analyzed Latina women to Latino men (the women earn 88%) and African American women to African American men (the women earn 90%) (Glynn, Ferrell). Glynn and Ferrell then switch to analyze the wages of the African American women and Latina/Hispanic women, then compare their wages to that of Caucasian men. “African American women earn 36 percent less than white men and Latinas a mere 45 percent. Interestingly, the gap between the earnings of Asian women and white men is smaller, just 12 percent, but that mounts up over a lifetime, and Asian American women earn just 73 percent of what Asian American men make,” (Glynn/Ferrell). Glynn and Ferrell’s article is a combination of inequality between genders, and inequality between
It is said that because of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the gender wage gap no longer exists. Studies today show that the gender wage gap is still very much alive. In the 6th edition of Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings written by Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, Shaw and Lee explain, “the gender wage gap is an index of the status of women’s earnings relative to men’s and is expressed as a percentage and is calculated by diving the median annual earnings for women by the median annual earnings for men” (Shaw and Lee 497). Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics in 2010 showed the ratio of women’s to men’s annual earnings were 77%. This means for every dollar a man made, a woman made 77 cents. Shaw and Lee
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,
The facts have been laid out plain and simple the gender wage gap is still something very persitant in society. Still some people argue that gender in the workplace doesnt matter. Like In article The Gender Wage Gap Is a Myth by Stephen Jarosek, Jaroske argues that the wage gap is not an example of gender bias, but instead is the result of women making the choice not to work or to work fewer hours. He claims that women and men simply make different choices in the work world and that many men are more willing to sacrifice personal time to commit to work while many women are not. He does by using several stastics to show the gender wage has been a myth all along. Then he says, ”The wage gap is not a wage gap at all. It is a choices gap. Put simply, women have more choices than men. In most cases, their additional choices (e.g., stay-at-home-mom) require men to continue providing for them, and this is the reason for the wages gap.” ( Jarosek para. 5 ). This means there is no hidden agenda, women and men get payed the same . It’s simply a womens choice to work less hours to take care of a family and therfore earn less money than her male colleague. This really shows that people really do believe that it’s the womens fault for not making the same amount as men. That because most women want a family and obviously men don’t, women work less hours than men to maintain a “mom life”. So have women really for all these years, not been working as hard or as long men simply because
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. It is time to face the facts and find solutions for this epidemic.
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. As of 2015 women are only making between $0.76 and $0.80 for every dollar men are making. The pay gap does vary by each job, CNBC says “Of course, the pay gap varies greatly by industry. The disparity was largest — nearly 30 percent — between men and women in finance and insurance, without controlling for job title, education and years of experience, among other factors,” click here for link. As you can see women are clearly paid less than men of the same career and 83% of women believe that along with 68% of men who feel they are being paid more as well. In addition to this women have come forward and explained how they are paid less than men who are their co-hosts, co-workers,
The gender pay gap is the difference between earnings made by men and earnings by women. The Gender pay gap is generally due to various reasons, such as differences discrimination in hiring process, differences in negotiations for pay, differences in education choices, differences in the jobs men can go compare to women can’t easily go for.
Sometimes, women are not given the chance to make more money because employers think that men are stronger, smarter, or more experienced or skilled (Gender Differences 84). This obviously means that women do not get a fair chance to get higher paying jobs in some cases. However, women know how to fight and try to make things right. An example of this is in the article “Understanding the ‘‘Family Gap’’ in Pay for Women with Children”. Jane Waldfogel states that if women had “not increased their investments in education and experience, the gender pay gap would have widened in the 1980s simply due to the changes in the overall wage structure” (140). In the United States, women have been fighting for their equality since the beginning. First, it was the women’s suffrage movement that was catching everyone’s eye. Recently, the fight against the gender wage gap has come to many people’s attention and is finally making an
With the current elections bringing about many debates on hot topic issues it is no surprise that women’s suffrage has become a battle cry for many presidential candidates. These candidates play to the hopes of many women by promising equal rights for equally qualified male and female workers. These persuasive and motivating arguments for women’s rights calls to question what is the extent of this issue? The reality is that there is a significant wage gap between male and female workers. This wage gap causes men to be paid more than women, even when they do the same jobs and are equally qualified for those jobs. This essay will attempt to analyze two graphs by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to visualize what the wage difference of equally
In the article “The Gender Pay Gap Is a Myth”, Steve Tobak expresses his opinion on the difference in pay between males and females. The gap in pay between men and women has been a reoccurring controversy through many decades. While some say that women are generally paid at a lower scale than men, there are others that believe that this is a myth. Published on May 3, 2013 by Fox Business, throughout this article the Tobak explains his reasoning as to why he believes that the gender pay gap is a myth. Through an analysis of the beginning of the article, what he believes about the gender pay gap discrimination, and by looking in the general demographic of Fox Business readers, it can be determined if the author is successfully persuading his readers.
Protecting our basic civil rights in the United States is a recognizable value that all citizens want to obey or carry out. Civil rights are rooted on the idea of any citizen not receiving equal or fair treatment compared to the people around them. Although this is true, a major issue in today’s society that I have discovered revolves around the difference in gender equality and the gender wage gap in the workforce. Some people believe that females are not as capable as males causing a flux in the wages paid for the same job, however this is a stereotype that needs to be exterminated.