First-wave feminists fought for equality between men and women, so that women could have their own rights. One of the rights that women fought for was the ability to get post-secondary education (Lorber, 2010, p. 2). As a result, women had the ability to attend post-secondary education, and have been exercising this right ever since. In 2005, 58% of women received all bachelor’s degrees (Snyder & Dillow, 2007, p. 325). Yet once graduation occurs, there is a different form of gender inequality found at the workplace. Although disparity between the number of men and women in the workforce is explainable, there is nothing to justify the pay inequality between genders. Even currently, the difference between the wages of a male and female worker of the same standard is vast, favouring the male workers. Despite women statistically out-performing men in school, their hard work does not get reflected later on in their lives when they get underpaid in comparison to their male equivalents.
Throughout this paper there will be a repetition of terms that have lost their meaning due to their overuse. For example gender, a term often interchanged with sex, does not actually refer to the biological assignment of male or female but is each person’s perception of what society deems as “male” and “female” and how each person associates themselves. Although there are plenty of different accepted genders in society (third gender category) the two in focus will be male and female. The focus falls on the ultimatum settings of male or female as they are the most socially accepted gender roles. There ought to be equality for all genders alike, but the fact that society has yet to master equality between male and females only shows lack of tolerance, an...
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... & Vanneman, R. (2004). Gender Inequality at Work . The American People: Census 2000 (pp. 107-137). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Figart, D., & Mutari, E. (1999). Global Feminization and Flexible Labour Markets: Gendered Discourse in the Opposition to Pay Equity Reform. Women, work and inequality: the challenge of equal pay in a deregulated labour market (pp. 44-57). New York: St. Martin's Press.
Lorber, J. (2010). Gender inequality: feminist theories and politics (4th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
McDermott, P. (1999). Pay Equity Lessons from Ontario, Canada. Women, work and inequality: the challenge of equal pay in a deregulated labour market (pp. 141-152). New York: St. Martin's Press.
Snyder, T. D., & Dillow, S. (2008). Digest of education statistics 2007. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences ;.
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.
Another reason for the pay discrepancy is that women are usually employed in low-wage occupations and industries, such as teaching. Even women working in the same industry, and having equal qualifications, earn less than their male counterparts — in fact, even top women executives earn considerably less, on average, compared to their male peers (Patel, 2016). The other reason for the gender pay gap is that more women than men work part-time jobs. According to the Canadian Women's Foundation (n. d), for the last 30 years until 2013, about 70% of part-time/temporary workers were women, which translated to 60% of minimum wage earners being women. Finally, the Canadian Women's Foundation (n. d) claims that approximately 10-15% of the wage gap is
Iversen, Torben and Frances Rosenbluth. Women, Work, and Power: The Political Economy of Gender Inequality. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Kindle E-Book.
Background: In Canada, there is still a pay disparity that exists. Research from the World Economic Forum shows that women’s pay is disproportionate to men. It has been estimated that it would take another 118 years to entirely close the gender wage gap. Canada ranked 35 out of 144 countries in terms of provision of equal pay to women on the Global Gender Gap Index in 2016. Iceland ranked 1st and with the United States at 45. Currently, Iceland uses a compulsory and proactive pay equity law to challenge wage discrimination and it has been found to be
By using theories of popular ideology as base material, the same errors committed by early generations of male scholars will be repeated. This is a critical barrier to defining gender inequality. Perhaps the fact that gender inequality, like other forms of inequality, creates two competing sets of myths has been continuously overlooked. One myth that shows men’s advantage, the other one that reflects women’s. Making opposite claims about what is considered true or just, and yet share some particular
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).
For several decades, most American women occupied a supportive, home oriented role within society, outside of the workplace. However, as the mid-twentieth century approached a gender role paradigm occurred. The sequence of the departure of men for war, the need to fill employment for a growing economy, a handful of critical legal cases, the Black Civil Rights movement seen and heard around the nation, all greatly influenced and demanded social change for human and women’s rights. This momentous period began a social movement known as feminism and introduced a coin phrase known in and outside of the workplace as the “wage-gap.”
Victoria. (2006). How Much of Remaining Gender Pay Gap is Result of Discrimination and How Much is Due to Individual Choices? International Journal of Urban Labour and Leaisure , 7 (2).
United States. National Equal Pay Taskforce. Assessing the Past, Taking Stock of the Future. Washington: GPO, 2013. PDF file.
Darity William A. Inequality, Gender." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Ed. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. 624-627. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.
One cannot begin the discussion of gender pay gap without defining it. Simply put, gender pay gap is the inequality between men and women wages. Gender pay gap is a constant international problem, in which women are paid, on average, less than that of their male counterpart. As to if gender pay gap still exist, 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. Due to various countries initiatives to shrink the wage inequality between men and women wages in the work force, the gap has narrowed, respectively, which may have helped form such opinion. However, stating that the gender pay gap does not exist in today’s society, anywhere, is completely unlikely. Seeing that the gap has loosened its grasp in the working world, in other countries, the gap between pay has widen or remained stagnant. One cannot help but wonder why the gap remains consistent even with such substantial progress made in countries where the gap has decreased.
In today’s society, Women perform similar jobs to men. Whether it’s blue or white collar jobs, women are always present and thriving for success balancing a life of business and family. In the job market, some are graduates of the best schools and have interned at the best firms, but are still not compensated as equally as men. Following the recent comments by the CEO of Microsoft concerning women asking for raises and how they should trust the system to install equality, the issue seems to be still present, and women’s work is not rewarded similarly to men’s.
Gender is such a ubiquitous notion that humans assume gender is biological. However, gender is a notion that is made up in order to organize human life. It is created and recreated giving power to the dominant gender, creating an inferior gender and producing gender roles. There are many questionable perspectives such as how two genders are learned, how humans learn their own gender and others genders, how they learn to appropriately perform their gender and how gender roles are produced. In order to understand these perspectives, we must view gender as a social institution. Society bases gender on sex and applies a sex category to people in daily life by recognizing gender markers. Sex is the foundation to which gender is created. We must understand the difference between anatomical sex and gender in order to grasp the development of gender. First, I will be assessing existing perspectives on the social construction of gender. Next, I will analyze three case studies and explain how gender construction is applied in order to provide a clearer understanding of gender construction. Lastly, I will develop my own case study by analyzing the movie Mrs. Doubtfire and apply gender construction.
Despite government regulations to promote equality within the workplace, women’s salaries continue to lag behind males in similar career with similar experiences. According to research performed by Blau & Kahn (2007) “women salaries averaged about 60% of men’s until the 1970s and rose to nearly 80% by the 1990s” (as cited in Bendick, Jr. & Nunes, 2012, p.244). Today, women on average earn approximately $.81 for every dollar that men earn in the United States (Guy and Fenley P.41 2014).
The opportunities available to 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. There is no denying that the salary of men is far more than that of women’s. In the Great Britain (and other parts of the globe), there are pieces of evidence which suggest that gendered practices of participation in the labor force still have significant impact on the economic security level that men and women develop over the course of their lives (Warren 606).