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The importance of equal pay
The importance of equal pay
Problem with gender pay gap
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Pay inequality is a great social injustice of the 21st century. In cases covering inequality, there is a simple way to test if a person is being treated unfairly: If a white male were in this position, would they be treated the same way as a person of any other gender, race, religion, etc.? If the answer is no, then more likely than not, the treatment is unfair. The nuances of any specific situation in which this test can be applied can be argued endlessly, but in the end there is no reason why a person should not be treated equally. Today, women are paid only 79 percent of what men are for the same work. The arguments used to keep the pay gap usually focus on facts that ignore the big picture and try to place the blame entirely on women. They include suggestions that women aren’t as competitive as men, they don’t negotiate for more money, they pick lower paying professions, they prioritize their family, and they are not as productive as men. This issue is not because of qualifications. The increase in education for women has not closed the gap. Even at an equally advanced degree, women make 74 percent of what men make, according to The American Association of University Women. The Census Bureau found that women have even …show more content…
Women typically make up 70 to 80 percent of all consumer purchasing, according to Forbes. Decreasing the spending money that half of the population has does not only affect those receiving the unequal pay. It decreases the amount of money that could be used to stimulate the economy. It hurts people in poverty and middle class. It hurts all taxpayers who have to subsidize programs to support people who are inadequately paid. By increasing women’s workforce participation and reaching equal pay, it could add $2.1 trillion to the U.S. GDP, according to Fast Company. There is no logical argument to deny equal pay to
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 ...
On the contrary, women still get paid less than men. According to CNN Money, “men still make more than women in most professions -- considerably more in some occupations than others, according to a new study by the job search site Glassdoor”. Although we like to comfort ourselves with the idea that we have gotten our rightfully earned rights, we had not been given bathroom breaks until 1998. Furthermore, employees are still afraid to have a voice in the workforce. Employers establish rules that let laborers know that they are inferior.
The struggle for pay equity is part of America's evolving sense of what is fair and just. After all, slavery was once an accepted part of this democratic nation; union
There is a pay gap between men and women in the U.S. The pay gap affects women of all educations levels, and backgrounds. But white men are the largest demographic in labor forces so they possibly favor each other as opposed to women. The graph didn’t specify the type of jobs, or whether they were working parts time or fulltime. But in 2016, women working full time in the U.S. were paid 80% of what men were getting paid. There are some occupations that have not reached the equity but some have like retail, banking and real
The highest earning fifth of U.S. families earned 59.1% of all income, while the richest earned 88.9% of all wealth. A big gap between the rich and poor is often associated with low social mobility, which contradicts the American ideal of equal opportunity. Levels of income inequality are higher than they have been in almost a century, the top one percent has a share of the national income of over 20 percent (Wilhelm). There are a variety of factors that influence income inequality, a few of which will be discussed in this paper. Rising income inequality is caused by differences in life expectancy, rapidly increases in the incomes of the top 5 percent, social trends, and shifts in the global economy.
The reality of wage differences between men and women is that above all changes women continue to earn less than men. Countless arguments have promoted that wage inequality has changed and that everyone finally receives an equal amount of pay. “For women of color, the gap is largest of all: In 2006, black and Hispanic women earned 86 and 87 cents on the white man’s dollar, respectively,” (Mcswane 2). If a woman is lucky enough she will get an equal pay compared to a man doing the same job. But it is challenging for a woman of a minority background to achieve this. Not only are women paid less because of their sex, but also because of their race. There seems to be a mentality that because someone is a woman and a minority that they cannot do the same job as men or that women do not have the same education as the men, so employers do not have to pay them the same. “When the numbers are broken down by district, they 're pretty hard to ignore. Women in Texas are being utterly screwed financially, according to the data compiled by AAWU, with women earning anywhere from 66 percent of what men do in some districts, to the top end of things, which is about 89 percent,” (Leicht 4). The proof cannot be ignored. It i...
Income inequality not only harms us fiscally, but also affects our mental and physical wellbeing; therefore, it is important to identify the right ways to control wealth distribution among people.
Ever since agriculture replaced hunting and gathering, the division of labor led to the creation of social classes and the division of land and unequal distribution of food surplus allowing inequality to flourish. Unfortunately, this has not only remained, but inequality has exponentially grown, making the difference between each social class quite noticeable. This distressing factor makes American economy highly unstable, and there is little to be done in order to fix this grave issue. It is only a matter of time before America’s economy comes crashing down. American economic inequality has been around for a long time, and it has become a monumental issue.
With a record 64 million women in the workforce, pay discrimination hurts the majority of American families. Families lose $200 billion in income annually to the wage gap—an average loss of more than $4,000 for each working family. In addition, wage discrimination lowers total lifetime earnings, thereby reducing women’s benefits from Social Security and pension plans.
There are nearly as many women as there are men working, yet, as it was discovered in 2011, on average, a woman will only earn seventy-seven cents for every dollar that a man earns. Women owned businesses make up for over a quarter of all national businesses and earn more than one point two trillion dollars (“Assessing the Past, Taking Stock of the Future” 6). Since many women are now becoming are the primary sources of income in the household, making less that a man does not only negatively affect families, but also the overall economy suffers as well. These women, among many others, are the ones who end up purchasing the supplies that go toward improving communities and stimulating the economy. There is no reason that the general public should stand for this. Women should be treated equally to men in today’s American society based on their biological compositions, psychological profiles and contributions to history.
Someone has to do the work of rising children and reward for such important work should not be marginalization, suffer a loss of status, and be at an increase risk of poverty. It makes economic sense to equalize pay, especially since there are more women than men heading households and in the labor force. These women become the economic decision makers, if they receive their fair pay, it’s highly likely that those dollars will be going directly back into the
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.
Women without a doubt do deserve equal pay. The gender pay gap may only last for a couple more years or maybe the wage gap may always exist. However that doesn’t make it right. Women go through their daily lives hearing the many excuses society throws at them. Men matter more, they need the money more, their more qualified, and so on. Nevertheless, none of that is true; women have proved to be independent hard working females who are depended on just as much as men. They have the same responsibilities to uphold and are just as qualified to perform at a man’s level. This wage gap has gone on for long enough and it is a women right as a citizen to be looked upon as an equal. Every women matters, every dollar matters, the wage gap matters.
Discrimination at work is a touchy issue. Most people, if not all, have experienced some sort or form of it and they ignored it, quit, or got fired from their job. Women tend to be more emotional than men and when women are judged and discriminated they are offended by it immediately. Also, the fact of women getting a lower income than men for the same job is almost unbelievable. It is very important to be concerned on the issue because it is constantly increasing throughout the United States. It upsets me that women are paid less than men because women have the same ability and work ethic as men do, but they are looked at differently. According to AAUW, women are making 77 percent of what men make. This rate hasn’t changed since 2002 (Hill, 2013). Statistics show that women will never make as much as men due to the thought of never being comparable to men (Williams, 2013).
In the workplace, women do not receive the same benefits that men do. Some women do the same job, for the same amount of hours, and still do not receive the same pay for their work. Is there a specific reason behind this? No, it is just one of the many inequalities that goes on on the job. As pointed out in the essay by Susan Faludi, Blame it on Feminism, women earn less. The average women’s paycheck is twenty percent less than their male counterparts. Men with only high school education’s make more than some women who have graduated college. Most women are still working the traditional “female” jobs: secretaries, teachers, and nurses for example. Construction work, engineering, and doctor’s, are considered “out of our reach” and men’s jobs. Women are very capable of doing these jobs, but most times when applying for a “man’s job” are not taken seriously. American women are more likely not to receive health insurance and twice as likely not to draw pension then American men. They face the biggest gender-biased pay gap in the world.