Female Discrimination in the Labor Force
In the past decades there has been a dramatic increase in the number of women participating in the labor force. This expansion has unfortunately shown how women are still being treated as inferior citizens when comparing their wages and the jobs they are hired for to that of men. Many women in similar occupations as men, and having the same qualifications are only paid a fraction of what their male counterparts are paid. The only reasonable explanation that can be found for this income gap is discrimination. This unfair treatment shown throughout the handouts illustrate how far people still have to go before equal treatment becomes standard.
The increase in female participation started occurring during the 1970's.
The number of women in the civilian labor force jumped from 23 million in the
1960's to 31 million in the 1970's. This leap would continue and increase in the 1980's and on into the 1990's. The result, in 1995, is a female labor force that numbers over 60 million. This comprised 46 percent of the civilian work force (10).
A reason for the rise in participation by women may be in the way women saw marriage and children. Fewer women saw marriage as a settling down. Women who had children began to return to their jobs. The number of working women that were either married or had children or both increased dramatically. In
1965, women with children under 18 years of age numbered 35.0 percent of the labor force. This number increased to 47.4 percent in 1975. In ten years it was 62.1 percent and finally in 1995 it had grown to 69.7 percent (7). This showed that the female attitude towards having children and marriage has changed.
According to the handouts, in 1970 women were paid poorly when compared to their male counterparts. The female worker had a median yearly earning of 19,
101 dollars. This was only 59.4 percent of what the males made. This does start to change in the 1980's as female earnings rose to 60.2 percent of men's.
Five years later it had reached 64.6 percent. By 1990, the female's earnings had risen to 71.6 percent of what a man would make (2).
Women in the workplace have always been discriminated against. Ever since the first women started to work...
... middle of paper ...
... that women were in some way not as accomplished or competent as men. Yet, a more in depth investigation would show that women are just as qualified, if not more so, than men. A principal of equal pay for equal work should be employed by all businesses and would definitely close the income gap.
Most people want to correct the unequal treatment of women in the work force. One method that can be used to support equality would be to introduce a federal legislation to guarantee equal pay for equal work if there isn't one already. The logistical problem with this solution though would be great. How would people measure the value of one person's work to another's? Who would decide this and how would it be implemented? Much still has to be done before this important issue is laid to rest.
People's attitudes towards women in the work force is slowly starting to change. More opportunities are appearing for women workers. The unequal treatment of working women will take years to change, but change is occurring.
This topic will remain until the day people are treated and paid equally based upon their abilities and not anything else.
Just one century ago the experience of women compared with men was extremely different – many of them did not have access to education, nor they did have a political voice,. Ellen Gruber Garvey, Professor in the English Department of New Jersey City University, who teaches Women's and Gender Studies, argues that in the past century women, who lived in rural areas, experienced more challenges than women living in the city, as they were more labored with domestic work on the farm. Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930), American author, in her short story “The Revolt of Mother” (1890) depicts the life of Sarah Penn, an obedient wife and a mother of two children, on the farm in rural New England. The plot of the story presents a snapshot of the protagonists’ life forty years into the matrimony. The climax of the story appears when Adoniram Penn, Sarah’s husband, leaves the farm for a few days, and Sarah, worn out by the droopy house they have resided in for forty years, decides to relocate hearth and home into the new “fine edifice” on their property—another livestock barn that was recently built by Adoniram. Her radical decision, made without any confirmation from her husband, invokes an utmost reaction from the village folks. Based on Freemans’ depictions in the story of the domestic condition Sarah was living in, as well as the promise of a new house her husband gave forty years ago, justifies her act of revolt. However, “The Revolt of Mother” is not a story about a personal revolt: through the character of a Mother, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman illustrates women’s battle against their powerlessness in patriarchal society, as well as an example of emergence of “companionate family model” instead of the “patriarchal family model.”
This paper highlights a few fallacies that surround Socrates’ ideas about acting against unjust government.
During the time of Socrates, the people and the government went hand-in-hand; they were in agreement. If a person chose to reside in a city, it meant that that individual decided to follow and carry out all laws that had previously been enforced by the government. The city of Athens provided education, protection, and the mere existence of life to Socrates. In return, he was under the idea that he was required to serve his community. Since Socrates had accepted the Athenian culture into his life, he believed that he should be punished for committing wrongful acts against the city’...
Even though, most women in the sixties were housewives there was a small percent of women who actually worked. Statistics shows that thirty eight percent of women worked jobs such as nursing, teaching, or being a secretary. (Bureau Statistics, 1960-1961) In this era, women were only allowed thes...
The subject matter of the “Republic” is the nature of justice and its relation to human existence. Book I of the “republic” contains a critical examination of the nature and virtue of justice. Socrates engages in a dialectic with Thrasymachus, Polemarchus, and Cephalus, a method which leads to the asking and answering of questions which directs to a logical refutation and thus leading to a convincing argument of the true nature of justice. And that is the main function of Book I, to clear the ground of mistaken or inadequate accounts of justice in order to make room for the new theory. Socrates attempts to show that certain beliefs and attitudes of justice and its nature are inadequate or inconsistent, and present a way in which those views about justice are to be overcome.
The behavior between the 1960’s and 1980’s was influenced by diverse factors. In the 1960’s the population was 177,830,000, the minimum wage was one dollar per hour, the life expectancy for males in the 1960’s was about 66 years old, and the life expectancy for females was about 73 years (Goodwin and Bradley). These facts were made by behaviors from the baby boom after the war (Goodwin and Bradley). In contrast to the 1980’s, the minimum wage, life expectancy, and population increased within two decades swiftly. The population in the 1980’s was 256, 546,000, the minimum wage was three dollars and ten cents, and the life expectancy for males rose up to about 70 years old and for females the life expectancy increase...
Scent is part of the five senses that are developed when an infant is still in the mother’s womb. It is processed by a part of the brain that correlates with memory, so at a young age an infant could differentiate who their mother is by scent. Odor is a sign and olfactory condition (Waskul & Vannini, 2008). As someone gets older they begin to develop scents they like and dislike. There are also scents that people find attractive and unattractive. When meeting another individual for the first time a human’s first instinct is to smell them without realizing it. For instance, have you ever sat by someone or hugged someone who smelled good or bad? If so, many people tend to associate the scent with attractiveness or unattractiveness depending on the level of smell. There have been many studies indicating that there is a strong correlation between odor and attractiveness. Although the scent is a universal and an undetectable smell it can influence the level of perceived attractiveness of another person.
During the Great War and the huge amount of men that were deployed created the need to employ women in hospitals, factories, and offices. When the war ended the women would return home or do more traditional jobs such as teaching or shop work. “Also in the 1920s the number of women working raised by fifty percent.” They usually didn’t work if they were married because they were still sticking to the role of being stay at home moms while the husband worked and took care of the family financially. But among the single women there was a huge increase in employment. “Women were still not getting payed near as equally as men and were expected to quit their jobs if they married or pregnant.” Although women were still not getting payed as equally it was still a huge change for the women's
ABSTRACT: This paper has a two-fold task. First, I show that there are three types of individuals associated with the Thrasymachean view of society: (a) the many, i.e., the ruled or those exploited individuals who are just and obey the laws of the society; (b) the tyrant or ruler who sets down laws in the society in order to exploit the many for personal advantage; (c) the "stronger" individual (kreittoon) or member of the society who is detached from the many and aspires to become the tyrant. Second, I argue that if Thrasymachus’s account of the perfectly unjust life of the tyrant is to be more than a theoretical ideal, then the stronger individual who aspires to the tyrant’s position would do well to lead a double life—namely, pursuing private injustice while maintaining the public ‘appearance’ of justice. My interpretation accords with that of Glaucon, noted at the beginning of Republic II. I want to extend Glaucon’s interpretation to include the stronger individual as well. I argue that the standpoint of the stronger individual, as distinct from the standpoints of the tyrant and the many, shows Thrasymachus’s three statements regarding justice to be consistent with one another.
“The Revolt of ‘Mother’” by Mary Wilkins Freeman, was a story of a woman who lived in New England around or before the author’s time. The mother, Sarah Penn, was kept out of the families decisions by the father, Adoniram Penn, until one event that lead to her taking drastic actions while her husband was gone. There are many religious symbols and actions taken by “Mother” within the story. Through the story Sarah moved from a feeling of servitude to her husband, to a feeling that she was in servitude to the Lords will and this led her, in the end, to hold power over her husband.
Since the time women were eligible to be an employee of a workplace, they have become victims of discrimination. Discrimination is the practice of treating a person or group of people differently from other people (Webster, 2013). Thousands of women have suffered from discrimination in workplaces because they are pregnant, disabled, or of the opposite sex. It is crazy to think that someone would fire a woman because she became pregnant and needed to have some work adjustments ("Pregnancy and parenting,"). A woman goes through a lot to give birth to children, and men will never understand the complications a mother encounters during the pregnancy. Sadly, males think that pregnant women don’t make a working hand, which is totally wrong.
Whether or not how everyone’s individual personality is either predetermined by their genetics and hormones or is developed by external factors encountered from birth and as we age. That is the debate in the discussion of nature vs. nurture. Nature being that it is predetermined and caused by our genetics and nurture meaning it is caused by external factors we face throughout our lives.
Although some of the worst employment discrimination was eliminated by the Civil Rights Act in 1964, many women continue to undergo unfair and unlawful discrimination in the workplace. Even though women have come a long way, they are still being discriminated against in certain fields of work. High-end jobs, most commonly large companies and medical fields, continue to discriminate against women even though they have the same job qualifications as men.
Women were drawn into the work place in the 1960's when the economy expanded and rising consumer aspirations fueled the desire of many families for a second income. By 1960, 30.5 percent of all wives worked and the number of women graduating from college grew. (Echols, 400) Women soon found they were being treated differently and paid less then their male co-workers.