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 …show more content…
One of the most controversial topics in civil rights law is comparable worth. Comparable worth was an idea proposed by the Carter Administration in order to promote equal pay for women. In explanation, “This new item on the political and legal agenda was a theory of wage discrimination whereby employers would be prohibited from paying lower wages for distinctively “female” jobs, such as nurse or secretary, then they paid for typically “male” jobs, such as engineer or electrician, provided the disparity in pay did not reflect comparable difference in the worth of the work performed” (Weiler, 1228). This new policy was effective from a sociological standpoint because it took into consideration occupational sex segregation. Society creates generalized ideas and responsibilities attributed to a person based purely on their sex. Occupational sex segregation in specific, is the process of placing women and men into different types of jobs. This form of segregation …show more content…
Due to the inequality in women's pay wages it affects a woman's ability and power to purchase goods. From a sociological viewpoint, “On the macro level, wages and living standards become depressed, available labour resources are not fully utilised, labour disputes are instigated and the free flow of goods is hampered” (Hessaramiri and Kleiner, 37). Not only are women crippled by this unfair wage gap, but society is as well. The inequality between men and women causes a large scale effect on society's success as shown by the examples provided by Hessaramiri and Kleiner. This lack of resources that a woman has access to is an example of gender stratification. Gender stratification is unequal access to wealth, power, status, prestige, and other valued resources due to the gender or sex of an individual. In this case gendered institutions, the workplace, are preventing the economy from growing, improving and becoming successful due to the lack of business as a result of the pay gap. Women’s inability to pay is preventing other women from becoming wealthier, as well as other men. If companies understood this phenomenon and never ending cycle of money it may be more likely for them to decrease the gender pay gap. Currently the wage gap is projected to disappear by the year 2056 (Yoshino, 590). If companies adjusted their policies and ended gender
Throughout the world, discrimination in all forms has continued to be a constant struggle; whether it’s racial, gender based, religion, beliefs, appearance or anything that makes one person different from another, it’s an everyday occurrence. A major place that discrimination is occurring at is in the workplace. One of the largest problems discrimination issues is believed to be gender. Women, who have the same amount of experience as men are not getting paid at the same rate as men, these women also are equally trained and educated. According to the article Gender Pay, it was discovered in 2007 that a woman makes 81 cents for every dollar a man earns.(“Gender Pay”) . This shouldn’t be happening in today’s society for the fact the society lived in today is suppose to be more accepting. Men are viewed as being more popular, valuable and having higher powers than women. The Reason Discrimination is involved in the equal pay equal work is because of the significance it has to how some businesses pay their employees.
Additionally, we believed men deserved to have higher power by getting more money than women. After some research, we think it’s not fair that women make less than men who have the same education and the same job. In the long run, it can make it hard for women to support their families. We found out that the gender pay gap is a “complex issue with many causes”, which are often inter-related. It seems that the direct cause of this issue is discrimination. We also found out that inequality starts early; just one year out of college, college-educated women working full-time earned $32,000 compared to $42,000 for college-educated men working
The fight between men and women and equal rights and pay has been going on for many years. The wage gap is contributed by many factors like sex, race discrimination, education, but manly overall how men and women have been viewed as. Men are paid more because they work “harder and are stronger” where’s woman’s jobs are “less work and not as strong” therefore, that’s why the pay and the job occupations is different. Over the past century, American women have made tremendous strides in increasing their labor market experience and their skills (The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations). The pay gap goes beyond wages and is even greater when we look at workers’ full compensation packages. Compensation includes not just wages, but also
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 wage gap is a major issue that is constantly brought up in the work place. Numerous people use the term “wage gap” to state how gender can affect somebody 's income. There has always been an understanding that men typically made more money than women. For a long time, women were not allowed to work; therefore men were in charge of “bringing home the bacon”. However, times have changed and there are various situations where a household is centered off a women’s’ income. Females can become single mothers who have a responsibility to care for a child(s). Responsibilities can include monthly payments of water and electric bills and even weekly payments towards groceries. Women have to acquire enough money so that they are able
When President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 into law, he hoped that it would allow working women to finally earn the same amount of money as men; however, more than half a century later, men continue to out earn women in almost every field of work (Lipman para. 4). Male dominated fields tend to pay more than female dominated fields at similar skill levels. In 2012, women earned an average of $691 per week while men earned an average of $854 per week. Furthermore, the majority of women remain unaware that they are earning less than their male colleagues (Hegewisch para. 1).
The gender pay gap has existed ever since women entered the workforce. Right now in the United States, the average female worker earns 78 percent of what the average male worker earns (“Gender Pay Gap: Recent Trends”). Also, according to the
Despite the passage of protective federal legislation in the forms of the Equal Pay Act in 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Acts of 1964, there still exists prominent gender discrimination in the workplace that negatively impacts career advancement for women. This is best seen through the case example of Ann Hopkins. Hopkins was denied a career advancement to partner status within Price Waterhouse solely based on her perceived femininity and not the quality of her previous work for the company. This incident occurred in 1982, roughly 20 years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act and Title VII. Although the Equal Pay Act and Title VII have made great strides towards economic gender equality in the United States, they are by no means complete. The United States needs additional legislation in order to guarantee equal pay for equal work.
The United States has one of the highest gender pay gaps among the developed countries. In the country, the gender pay gap is measured as the ratio of female to males yearly earning among workers in full-time, year round (FTYR) earnings. In 2009, female FTYR earned 77% (0.77) as much as the FTYR male workers (US Census Bureau, 2013). The history of Gender Gap earning reveals USA has made big strides towards reducing the gender pay gap from 1980. For instance, in 1980 the gender pay gap ratio was 0.62 while in 1990, the gap stood at 0.72. Further from 1990 to 2000, the gap reduced to 0.73 and then to 0.77 in 2009. Currently, the gender pay gap stands at 0.76 and continues to persist (US Census Bureau, 2013).
Pay equity programs attempt to address the undervaluation for work traditionally or historically done by women. Pay equity (also referred to as “comparable worth”) programs require a gender-neutral analysis of comparative work. A variety of very different jobs are compared based on a composite of the skill, effort and responsibility of a job and the conditions under which the job is generally done. The comparison determines the relative worth of those jobs to the achievement of a firm’s objectives, under the proposition that equal contribution merits equal compensation. Where female-dominated jobs in the workplace are found to be of equal or comparable value to male-dominated jobs but paid below the level of the male jobs or payline, then all employees in those female-dominated jobs are entitled to receive pay equity adjustments.
One cannot begin the discussion of the gender pay gap without defining it. Simply put, the gender pay gap is the inequality between men and women's wages. The gender pay gap is a constant international problem, in which women are paid, on average, less than that of their male counterparts. As to whether gender pay gap still exists, its exactness fluctuates depending on numerous factors such as professional status, country and regional location, gender, and age. In regards to gender, in some cases, both men and women have stated that the gap does not exist.
population in the country and because of no fixed salary, some women who can actually obtain a job are only paid a third of what male employees are paid monthly. Much of the gender discr...
It is very important to be concerned about 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 make 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).
Today in the United States, men make more than women in various sectors, including education and other trades favoring women workers. The gap gets bigger when comparing the wages earned by men to those of women in jobs favoring men workers such as construction or other physically demanding jobs. Women are less likely to work those jobs, therefor; men have the advantage of having more experience and get paid better. In addition, employers would rather hire a man instead of a woman because they believe that a man will be able to sustain the difficulty of the job and work longer hours which crate a disadvantage for women because they are unable to gain experience and become skilled in that certain field. Gender pay gap based on this information is explained as the result of the discrimination of employers toward the feminine sex in terms of pay, which discourage them to work certain jobs leading to create a bigger gap due to the lack of
Historically, males and females normally assume different kinds of jobs with varying wages in the workplace. These apparent disparities are widely recognized and experienced across the globe, and the most general justification for these differences is that they are the direct outcomes of discrimination or traditional gender beliefs—that women are the caregivers and men are the earners. However, at the turn of the new century women have revolutionized their roles in the labor market. Specifically in industrialized societies, the social and economic position of women has shifted. Despite of the improving participation of women in the labor force and their ameliorating proficiency and qualifications, the labor force is still not so favorable to women. The opportunities available for women in the market are not as diverse as those presented to men. Still, the construct of gender ideology influences how employers undertake economic decisions, and that is why companies still have jobs labelled as “men’s work” and occupations categorized as “women’s work.” Indeed, the pervasiveness of gender differences in labor markets is undeniably true, specifically with respect to salary gap between men and women, occupational gender segregation of men and women, and the challenge that women face in terms of juggling their time and attention between their career and family life.