Discrimination in all forms has been a persistent issue since a very long time; whether it is ethnicity, gender or physical appearance. One important discrimination that people face everyday, is in the workplace. Women earn 79- cents for every dollar a man earns. “An awful lot of times people will say there is no income gap”(Puzzanghera), but there is. Women being equally qualified and skilled for the same job a man does is paid less than him. This inequality is traced back to the widely accepted belief that men are more able than women in general. Females differ from males by biological characteristics but that does not necessarily mean that women should have unequal access to opportunities, power and money. Gender based Wage Gap is negatively …show more content…
According to Heidi Hartmann, a feminist economist and founder and president of the Washington-based Institute for Women 's Policy Research, “The Census Bureau reported in August, based on the Current Population Survey, that women’s real median earnings fell by $171, or 0.6 percent, from 2002 to 2003, while men’s increased by $336, or 0.8 percent. (The increase for men was not statistically significant, but the decrease for women was)”(Heidi). In light of these trends in women’s wages, women’s economic status has endured in the post recession period. Ida L. Castro, in her article on Discrimination in the workplace says, “ Over a woman’s lifetime, unequal pay hurts a lot. It directly affects how much- or how little- her pension and social security payments will be. Getting old often means becoming poor- for many women and people of color” (Castro). The Wage Gap is not healthy and affects a woman’s financial stability in the future, especially now that many women are the sole providers for their family. The Gender Wage Gap does not only affect women but a country 's economy as a whole. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Heidi Hartmann advances the argument that eliminating this imbalance and equalizing pay between men and women could have a positive effect on the American economy. She estimates that if the pay gap were to close, the …show more content…
Steps have been taken to end this injustice, and over the years the Wage Gap has narrowed, but yet is substantial. The 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Act, protects a woman’s right to take action against pay discrimination is not enough. Despite of laws that don’t allow gender wage gap, it continues. “Federal law already prohibits gender-based pay discrimination, but violations are hard to prove and wage gaps persist in nearly every industry” (Cowely). This indicates that the government needs to pass additional wage equality legislations with severe consequences if violated and also ways to expose the employers that practice this injustice. Since some people may not have the slightest idea that gender based wage gap exists, “Once pay gaps are revealed in black-and-white data, there is an additional incentive for employers to address it” (Puzzanghera). It might raise more awareness amongst the population and might be viewed to as an unjust, inhumane thing and not just illegal. It is important to give more attention to the fact that persistence of the gender wage gap cannot be clarified by contrasts in education, skills or experience. The gender wage gap is real, and has serious outcomes. The consequences of the wage gap on society are various and don 't just influence women. Gender segregation at work confines financial development, builds poverty and negatively affects the riches and prosperity of families. Over the years measures have been taken to close the Gender Wage Gap but it
The main purpose of the article, “Equal Pay Day: When, where and why women earn less than men” by Dana Ford, is to inform the audience about the pay gap between genders that still exists in the United States today. To emphasize on the subject of gender pay gap, Ford shows the reader how race, age, and even the state the woman lives in could affect how big or small the pay gap is. While the speaker, Dana Ford, may use a negative tone toward the issue, this newdesk editor is also aware of the progress in equality in the past 50 years. Ford states that “The good news is that the gender pay gap is getting smaller. In 1964, women on average were paid 59% of what men were paid.
This paper will explain that the gap should be closed because of the effects it has on women emotionally and financially and women with families. Also, it is time that women are treated equally to men in this country. To understand the subject more thoroughly it is important to analyze exactly why the wage gap has been an ongoing problem in our country. In the article “Separate and Unequal:
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
Women’s pay significantly increased in the 1970’s. This was largely due to more women getting degrees. Since then however the gap decreases very little annually. “At the rate of change between 1960 and 2015, women are expected to reach pay equity with men in 2059,” (Miller). Women cannot wait for the gap to fix itself.
When analyzing the intersections, it is clear the women of color face even more intense discrimination. Per the textbook, the wage gap for African-American women is 67.5 percent, Latinas: 58 percent, Asian-American: 90 percent. These figures are startling. As this is often the case, sadly, minority women are being taken advantage of the most. They face this further devastation for similar reasons, just on a new level.
The underlying problems concerning the gender wage gap, need to be brought to the forefront of the government. America has improved drastically regarding women’s equality, but there are important issues with stereotyping and assuming women are not as proficient as men in certain occupations, that leaves this nation flawed. These matters can be resolved by setting stipulations into major
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.
The year the Equal Pay Act was passed into law (1963) the wage gap between a man and women working full time was 41 cents with women making 59 cents for every dollar a man earned. Since then, the income disparity has decreased by almost 50 percent. In 2014, the wage gap was 21 cents with women making 79 cents for every dollar a man earned (The Wage Gap Over Time). This 20 cent decrease in the wage gap since 1963 shows how significant of a difference the Equal Pay Act and its enforcement through Corning Glass Works v Brennan, along with other court cases, have been. The current 21 cent wage gap today shows that the issue of unequal pay based on sex still exists, and that more needs to be done to close this gap.
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,
Assessing the Gender Wage Gap Throughout American history, discrimination has always been a problem no matter what event of the past. It 's a constant battle whether its race, religion, beliefs, gender, or simply how someone appears. One of the most controversial of these has to be the debates on whether or not there truly is a Gender Wage Gap. In fact, it does exist, but those who hear the words, “Gender Wage Gap”, may believe in a system where it 's designed to pay women less, regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class, than their counter sex. It may also seem that due to this, system, it generally means that women will have unequal pay for equal work.
Introduction The gender pay gap has long been investigated and it is hard to pinpoint exactly why there is a gap between the amounts of money that men earn the amount of money earned by women. There are so many factors that go into why someone is paid more than someone else that it could be said because of so many of these factors that a wage gap does not exist at all. Throughout the paper wage gap will be explored and how choices both men and women make factor into the pay gap. Also how a wage gap may not exist and it all lies in choices made by both genders, but the most common idea of discrimination towards women could also be a factor in pay differences.
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. Some factors that cause the gender pay gap: • Women leave and re-enter the workforce to meet their family and children expectations • Low pay for some jobs, like childcare due to historical trends that continue • Lower educational levels of women due to traditions • Discrimination in the hiring process, compensation and promotion at workplace.
In his article, Mark Perry, the professor of economics and finance, argues if the gender wage gap is caused by discrimination. In his opinion, simply claim that women are paid less due to discrimination is “fundamentally misleading” and “economically illogical.” There are more factors that affects this issue. In addition to the physical differences between men and women, different hours of work, importance degree of children, and occupational selections also influence different earnings.
It is proven that gender does contribute to a difference in wages in society and there for another cause of wealth inequality. The U.N. has found that gender discrimination is still a significant factor in holding many women and children around the world in poverty. In many countries, there is a gender income gap in the labor market. For example, in America, statistics show that “The median full-time salary for women is 78 percent of that of men”; despite the fact women make up half the workforce. One of the reasons women earn less income/money in their lifetime is usually because they are single mums and/or have more people/family to support on their
The United States is currently facing an economical problem that involves males and female differences within the workplace. Males are given bigger and sometimes even better rewards for doing equal amounts of work as their female counterparts. Females are frequently not receiving the same wage even if they can complete the same job of a male. Also, females are less likely to get promoted within their job if they are competing against a male. A source states, “Women are now more likely to have college degrees than men, yet they still face a pay gap in every single education level,