Gender Pay Gap

What’s Up With the Gender Pay Gap?

After a long hard week at work, it can be nice receiving that wonderful paycheck at the end. But what if you heard that your male co-worker earned more but did the exact same things as you? Would you just ignore it or talk to your boss about it? What if you knew that this unequal pay was fairly normal for most women in the workforce? This gap in the paycheck between men and women is commonly called the gender pay gap or the gender gap. We, as a society, need to find what’s causing this gap and learn how to get rid of it. The gender gap may have changed a lot over the years, but is still very present in the workforce today.

The gap between a woman 's and a man’s paycheck does exist even if others deny it. Katherine

Around the 1960’s the gap was at about 60% until Acts like the Equal Pay Act made gender discrimination in the workforce illegal thus closing the gap a lot by the mid-1990’s (Carnevale). The gender gap percentage can also vary depending on the area, career and other factors. For instance, in Wyoming, women earn 64% of men 's paychecks but in Washington D.C. it’s 90% (Carnevale). It has also been found that in areas like education and health care the pay is pretty equal between men and women but in areas like business and engineering the gap can range from 12 to 23 percent. Patricia Werhane, a professor of business ethics at DePaul University, says that business schools have been tracking this difference for years. They’ve found that even after men and women both earn their MBAs and start off with somewhat equal pay within five years the men are earning more and even have better promotions than the women (Goodale). And it doesn’t end there. Catherine Hill, American Association of University Women director of research, and Christianne Corbett have stated that “women experience the consequences of the pay gap from their very first paycheck to their very last Social Security check” (Goodale). The gender gap can affect a woman for life. That adds up to a lot of money women could be earning if paid equally and fairly. The gender gap may be changing, but

As Obama said in the Proclamation 9255 declaring April 13 as National Equal Pay Day, “Wage inequality affects us all, and we each must do more to make certain that women are full and equal participants in our economy” (Obama). It’s going to take more than one person and one day to fix the pay that men and women are given but it must start somewhere. “Individuals are encouraged to learn to value their work, familiarize themselves with pay scales in their field, and learn to negotiate. Businesses are urged to offer transparent pay information to employees as well as hire and pay without bias” (Goodale). We, as individuals and as a whole, must work together on learning and teaching others to see men and women and their abilities as equals. It won’t be easy but it must be done for the sake of all women, the families that a woman 's paycheck is providing for, and the overall whole of the