A Rhetorical Analysis Of John Oliver's In Wage Gap

“Women! What do they want?” John Oliver exclaims sarcastically as he begins his segment on the wage gap. John Oliver always begins his segments with sarcastic and witty comments in order to initially engage his audience which is largely young adults. His use of a news station background is what grabs the attention of news watchers. While he does discuss serious issues he does it with wit in order for his audience to come to the same conclusion as him. Knowing that the majority of his audience holds some college experience, “Last night tonight” expects the audience to be able to differentiate between the actual news and the host’s sarcasm. In his segment “Wage Gap”, host John Oliver uses statistics from the U.S Bureau of Labor, contradicting

Many of the experts concluded that it is the women’s fault that they don’t get paid as much as men because they choose to get married, have children, and go into lesser paying jobs. Oliver counters the argument by mockingly reminding the experts that “to be fair women didn’t choose to be the sole gender capable of pregnancy”. Experts continued on with ludicrous conclusions that since women go into lesser paying jobs, their wages can’t be compared against a man who chose a higher paying profession. The expert Cathy Mcmorris Rodgers very clearly stated that we have to compare “apples to apples and not pick and choose”. However, even a study from Yale University went on to compare “apples to apples” between two people, a man and a woman with the same exact experience, resume and education. Professors, who were given the identical resumes of a man and woman, rated the male candidate more favorably and on average four thousand dollars more to the female candidate. Host John Oliver uses that experiment to show that unequal pay is deeply embedded in our society. Host John Oliver is shining light on the “sexism deeply entrenched in our society”, and how complex being able to achieve equal pay may actually be. With a good portion of his audience being women Oliver is able to provide an argument that will effectively register with the audience. Because he is able to achieve this by providing clips of several experts, all contradicting each other or having a wide range of conclusions and clear evidence such as the study on how women are in general paid less for no specific reason other than the “deeply entrenched sexism” in our