Pay Gap And Gender Discrimination In The Workplace

There are those who would object to my thesis on the pay gap and gender discrimination in the workplace. Critics of initiatives to close the gender wage gap or those who deny that it’s a legitimate problem, say gender-based wage inequalities are due to individual choice, and therefore are of no concern to the government. According to Haberfield, “holding organizational characteristics constant by comparing men and women who hold similar organizational positions cannot allow researchers to capture the wage impact of discrimination that occurs when people are assigned to those positions (1992, p. 161). Women still earn 81 percent of what their male counterparts do, according to the Labor Department’s 2010 data and federal laws are enforced by

According to Corbett and Hill, "Women are more likely than men to work in business support and administrative assistance occupations and as teachers, social services professionals, and nurses and other health care providers” (2012, p. 15). Women are not choosing higher level positions and differences in occupation translate into different earnings for men and women. The fact that there are fewer women on boards, in more senior positions, and are shareholders, the explanation is simple; what you choose is what you get. Women “choose” responsibilities outside of work like bearing children and caring for sick and elderly family members. These are some of the reasons that keep them from taking on the kinds of jobs that would finally close the distance in pay between the genders. Statistics do not compare men and women doing equal work. According to Blau and Kahn, “today, even the majority of women with children a year or less in age are participating in the labor force. Nonetheless, on average, women have less work experience than men and that difference in qualifications is quantitatively important in explaining the gender pay gap 2007, p.10). There gender differences in jobs, hours worked, years of experience, educational attainment, or personal choices that women make about their careers. Women are more likely to concentrate on fewer types of jobs, and those jobs are more likely to be female dominated that often leads to lower