Introduction
Gender Pay Gap also referred to as Gender wage gap, gender income difference or male-female income difference refers to the difference between the earning of men and women (Victoria, 2006). The European Union defines the Gender Pay gap as the difference between men and women’s hourly earnings (OECD, 2012). The difference may be measured on hourly, weekly, monthly, or yearly earning. The difference is expressed as a percentage of the men’s earning. However, the difference varies from one industry to another, from one country to another and from one age group to another.
In the recent article of 2016, “What is the Gender Pay Gap and is it Real?”, the authors Elise Gould, Jessica Schieder, and Kathleen Geier give an ample amount of statistics that prove that women are paid less than men; for example, a woman was paid less than a man of the same education, experience, and occupation. In Kevin Miller’s article “The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap,” he states that full-time working women get paid 80 percent of what men are paid (Miller). According to the two articles mentioned above, factors such as age, stereotypes, and ethnicity can be the cause of the gender wage gap. In the 2016 article of “Four Ways the Gender Pay Gap Isn’t All It Seems,” author Simon Maybin claims that the gender wage gap does not exist
2. According to our text, what explains the gender gap in pay? Compare and contrast economic and sociological explanations of this gap.
Gender Wage Gap
The gender wage gap is a well-known aspect of our gender inequality in America. In April of 2013 the 50th anniversary of the equal pay act of 1963 was celebrated, this act was the declaration of "unconscionable practice of paying female employees less wages than male employees for the same job" (huffingtonpost) when signed. However we have even yet to see any changes 50 years later. To this day woman are still getting paid approximately 77 cents for every dollar a man makes.
Women have had full rights for almost 100 years but they are still facing discrimination. According to studies, “Full time women workers’ earnings are only about 78% of their male counterparts’ earnings” (“Your Right To”). If the same job is being done at the same rate of quality then why are women losing out on money for their families or for themselves? The pay gap can also affect retirement funds for the future. The fact of the matter is women are making less than their male coworkers and it has to be changed.
Women have faced gender wage discrimination for decades. The gender pay gap is the difference between what a male and a female earns. It happens when a man and a woman standing next to each other doing the same job for the same number of hours get paid different salaries. On average, full-time working- women earn just “77 cents for every dollar a man earn.” When you compare a woman and a man doing the same job, “the pay gap narrows to 81 percent (81%)” (Rosin). Fifty-one years ago, in order to stop the gender gap discrimination, Congress enacted the Equal Pay Act of 1963. The act states that all women should receive “equal pay for equal work”. Unfortunately, even in 2014 the gender pay gap persists and even at the highest echelons of the corporate; therefore, the equal pay act is a failure.
The majority of the pay gap between men and women actually comes from differences within the occupation without any fiscal discrepancy in regards to gender. The pay differences comes from the job title or position, not gender. This gap widens due to ranking or the type of chosen profession for example, business, law and solution, as indicated by information from Claudia Goldin, a Harvard University work economist and a heading researcher on ladies and the economy. "There is a conviction, which is simply not genuine, that ladies are simply in terrible occupations and on the off chance that we simply place them in better occupations, we would take care of sexual orientation whole issue" said Dr. Goldin. Putting ladies into higher-paying occupations would eradicate only 15 percent of the pay crevice for all specialists and somewhere around 30 and 35 percent for school graduates, she found. The remainder of the gap has to do with what is happening inside the workplace. “The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours,” she wrote in a paper published this month in The American Economic Review. The pay gap between men and women is exacerbated by bonus payments given to male managers which are on average double those for women, says the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).
There is no denying that a pay gap between men and women exists in the United States. Finding the reason as to why such a gap exists can prove difficult. There is a range of reasons as to why women earn less then their male co-workers. For starters, men hold most of the higher paying jobs. This could be from discrimination and men are being selected for better positions based exclusively on discrimination against their female counterparts. This does not have to be conscious discrimination but subconsciously stereotypes could be driving this gap. Another reason could be that men chase more lucrative careers. According to the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey it was concluded that within the STEM fields women only represent 24% of
In the United States, it has commonly been assumed that the issue of gender pay gap is more a fictional problem, and that even if it does statistically exist it is all due to the fact that women are, in fact, less qualified, or they work in less paid industries. However, according to the majority of recent reports although gender pay gap in the U.S.A. have noticeably shortened in last four decades, it persists to be a substantial problem. The aim of this study is to investigate American gender wage gap issue. This research assessed the degree to which work important qualifications, such as education and experience may influence the issue of gender pay gap, it also investigated the impact of an industry and its effects, as well. The findings
Within the United States it is not an unknown issue that there is in fact a noticeable gap between the wages of pay between men and women for the same jobs and responsibilities. In the year 2015 women were typically paid 80 percent of what men were payed, creating a pay gap of 20 percent between the two. In specific terms, as defined by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, gender pay gap is the difference between women’s and men’s average weekly full-time equivalent earning, expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings. Several issues have been brought into light by the issue of an unequal wages. Such issues as the implication that women have lesser worth than men, issues within the Equal Pay Act and the effect of unequal pay on society. In