Gender Pay Gap Essay

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Demonstrate your understanding of the gender pay gap. The Gender Pay Gap is the average hourly earnings difference between men and women (Heery, Noon, 2008). Women's wages are still found to be lower than men's, even after controlling for differences in characteristics such as region, industry, personal life, education, work experience and occupation (Fabling et al, 2012). This pay gap can no longer be explained as education, type of work, and family responsibilities. This leaves 80 percent of the pay gap as ‘unexplained’ factors, which meants that here is still discrimination towards women in the workforce regarding behaviour, attitude, and unconscious bias ( Pacheco & Cochrane, 2017). Although the gap has decreased over the last two …show more content…

Although discrimination is against the law in New Zealand, bias can affect decision people make in the workplace without them realising. All of these biases occur when people unconsciously stereotype, making it difficult for women to learn and succeed in the workplace. These biases change how women are perceived in the workplace and can lead them to missing out on many opportunities, decisions in hiring, promotions, and of course, salaries. Contrary to popular belief, research shows that women are now willing to negotiate their pay, but are still less likely to get a pay increase in comparison to men when they negotiate. Fixing the gender pay gap is going to take time. To do this, societal attitudes and beliefs about women and work need to change. This will require workers, employers, career advisors, business leaders, government, schools and parents to take collective action in changing these views (Ministry for Women, 2017). This has started with 28 percent of New Zealand employers conducting pay audits and 30 percent are implementing pay transparency within their organisation to help close the gender pay gap (Scott, 2017). Closing the gender pay gap will bring a greater economic independence for women and improve their chances of getting a higher level job. The economic independence means that women will have the capacity to repay their student loan and save towards

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