The Gender Wage Gap
According to Lilly Ledbetter, “We sought justice because equal pay for equal work is an American value.” This is how the view should be on the subject of the wage gap between the two genders which could be defined as the difference in earnings between men and women. J.R Shackleton, “Explaining the Overall Pay Gap,” the gender wage gap is justified for two reasons: women take more time off work than men, and men usually work in an unattractive work conditions. These two convincing reasons can justify the wage gap and show why women seem to be maltreated.
The first reason makes Shackleton believe that the gender wage gap is justified is that women ask for day off work more than men. Certainly, that affects their performance at work. As it has been noticed by Shackleton, “that women on average take more time off work than men for sickness.” (Shackleton par 18). As a result of this act, employers prefer to hire male more than female. This statement assures that the logical view of Shackleton about justification of the gender wage gap.
Shackleton brought up an important point about the gender wage gap. The statistics about women’s commitment to work attendance alerted the employers and affected their decisions in what is related to hiring females. This gave more opportunity for males to fill out these vacancies. It is worth mentioning that Shackleton indicates, “This led risk-averse employers to operate with stereotype, which might be accurate or inaccurate, of common group characteristics” (par 18).Shackleton’s mind is right. Some employers misled by statistics, and they have a stereotype view on women. Women need to make more efforts to change this reality.
The second reason for justifying the gender wage ga...
... middle of paper ...
...being wrongly prejudiced against, and this cannot remain the state of society. Without women in the workplace, society goes backward. There is a warning in Gertrude Stein’s words: “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” More to the point, if a woman does not want to work with a man, mankind ends.
Ultimately, As Shackleton justified the gender wag gap, The American values justifying that equal pay should be for equal work without considering the gender. Obviously, women are not expected to earn the same as men while their efforts are split between work and family. Shackleton demonstrated the fact that the work must be free of traditional considerations of gender, and he gave good examples on the subject. If women want to make the gender wage gap equal zero, they should work as same as the men or even more than men.
Works Cited
Argumentative Essay
In addition, women are paid less than men for the same type of work. According to Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg mentions that women were paid fifty-nine cents for every dollar men were paid in 1996, but women protested to raise the compensation to seventy-seven cents (6). This means that even though a woman and a man perform the same work such as an engineer does, both do the same assignments and have the same responsibilities in the technology place, men are paid twenty three cents more than women. Moreover, women suffer from “gender discount” which means women have to pay for being part of the workplace or society ...
A woman in the workplace was common but they did not receive the pay they deserved. Often, a woman’s job was the same as the previous male, but they did these jobs for 53% of the male’s pay. (Tolman) Eventually many woman and men went on strike demanding equal pay.
Thesis: Gender pay gap continues to impact working women in today’s society. Women who have the same education and experience as men deserve to be paid the same. By participating in the organizations to help stop the issue of unequal pay can eventually stop gender discrimination.
When women are actually given the same jobs as men, they may be paid the same but typically, they are not able to reach the higher positions in the company that men do. Even with their 77 cents to a man’s dollar, “women still tend to bear a larger responsibility for child care and other household matters within families” (Mazorelle). Women are not given the opportunity to earn as much as men, and they still have to take on a majority of the responsibilities of the household.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Traditional gender roles in the United States and other societies have always been dictated as where the man goes and works for a salary as women stay at home to take of house related work. However, many changes in the traditional family has made gender roles go through significant changes. Many women have gone through college and have obtained college education degrees, which has allowed women to advance their careers. The break down of rigid gender roles and the increase in participation of women in the workplace have granted women more choices in life. The choices many women now have in there career fields has made some controversial views on the intelligence of women achieving the status of their male counterparts The first view obtained in the workplace is the ability to make a even paying field for both men and women. Many constituents have pledge to achieve equality for women through laws forbidding the use of any sexist policies that may constitute discrimination against sex. The second is weather working women have been allowed to working women have the same opportunities rewarded to them as men do. Many political action committees have help perpetuate feminist movements which intended to build equal opportunity workplaces for both men and women however, many questionable issues still arise at weather working conditions have become better for women.
Nevertheless, historical records help explain pay inequality and they consider this theory. Economists and sociologists have explained that the features of the workers only slightly explain the difference. The education and previous experience have a small impact on the wage gap (Gibelman 23). However, there are examples of jobs that do discriminate against women’s wage. Examples of unequal pay include jobs with the government. These jobs pay more than many others, but there is still discrimination. Even with lawyers, there is a discrimination towards women (Gibelman 23). These jobs include higher paying jobs. It is not the minimum wage jobs that discriminate against women, it is some of the top paying jobs. This ties up with how women are seen in the top positions or leadership
The issue of equal pay between genders is still a problem in today’s society. Not to mention the argument of equal pay between genders of different ethnicities and minorities. A white man no matter his age, is unfairly paid more than a black or Mexican man. As well as a white woman can be paid more than both a black or Mexican man, and her ethnic female colleagues. Women of color are paid less than their male counterpart, not to mention the gaping wide wage gap between women of color and a white man. The many factors leading into why the wage gap exists or still exists is that men are stronger, and deserve bigger salaries. This is the main idea of sexism, and that women should earn less than men. When in some
Further data shows that in Woman’s lifetime, she will earn 77% of what a man will earn. However, there are controllable factors, such as job position, race, job industry and other factors, which affect the Gender Pay Gap. For instance, the US Department of Labor found that when such factors were considered, the gap ...
A number of factors have contributed to the gap between men’s and women’s wages. These include: occupational segregation of women into low paying jobs; lower levels of unionization for women and attitudinal barriers that have kept women from achieving equality in the workplace and undervaluation for women’s work.
For many years in United States, equal salary pay for women has been a major issue that women have been fighting for decades. This began back in World War II, when the National Labor Board urged equalize the salary rates for women with the same rates that males were getting of the same professions. (Rowen) Although, traditionally most women do not work to provide for there family and there are not so many independent women during World War II. After World War II more women lost their jobs to veterans returning to the workforce. Women in the workforce after the war have been discriminated ever since. The idea of women as weak and cannot perform there jobs
Due to various countries initiatives to shrink the wage inequality between men and women wages in the work force, the gap has narrowed, respectively, which may have helped form such opinion. However, stating that the gender pay gap does not exist in today’s society, anywhere, is completely unlikely. Seeing that the gap has loosened its grasp in the working world, in other countries, the gap between pay has widened or remained stagnant. One cannot help but wonder why the gap remains consistent, even with such substantial progress made in countries where the gap has decreased. Reasons as to why gender wage gap exist so heavily, slightly differs from country to country, but the overall effect from the wage disparity is wholly evident.
In the same contrast, society also benefits in a way from women’s disadvantage on pay. A lot of women are highly skilled workers who have a lot of experience and the potential of bringing more revenue for their companies, but because they are paid less, the company makes more revenue contributing into a better economy that everybody benefits from. Therefore, from an economical stand of point, society benefits from this disadvantage in a larger scale. Also, because markets tend to balance themselves, it may result in a better balance in wages rewarding women’s work and giving it
Although the Equal Pay Act was used to solve the inequality in the work force, it was an extremely limited approach to the problem, directed only to unequal pay for the same work when performed by men and women within individual establishments. Also, it did not fix the problems of a women’s limited access to jobs or the low pay for occupations they could
...d women’s biological purpose has provided men a source of comparative advantage in work. It is, therefore, natural for most companies to think that women cannot be as capable as men in terms of assuming strenuous or challenging positions because women, by default, become less participative and more vulnerable when they start to have family and children. Apparently, this situation has led to various gender discriminations in the labor market.
It can be concluded that women are treated in terms of stereotyped impressions of being the lowest class and greater evidence can be found that there are large disparities between the women and the men 's class. It can be seen that women are more likely to play casual roles as they are most likely to take seasonal and part time work so that they can work according to their needs. They are hampered from progressing upward into the organizations as they face problems like lack of health insurance, sexual harassments, lower wage rates, gender biases and attitudes of negative behavior. However, this wouldn’t have hampered the participation of the women in the work force and they continue to increase their efforts which is highly evident in the occupational and job ratios of females in the industry.