Gender Wage Gap And Gender Inequality

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Gender Wage Gap
I find the dismissal of the gender wage gap as a “debunked myth” to be infuriating, condescending and ignorant. While there is a large chunk of misleading statistics used to support the existence of this gap, ignoring it altogether only supports the notion of blatant misogyny. Let’s start this off with a definition of this infamous gender wage gap. The Pay Equity Commission of Canada defines it as the difference between wages earned by men and wages earned by women. Relative to Stats Canada, this means that for every dollar that a full-time male worker earns, a full-time woman worker will earn approximately 26 percent less. Ouch? Not quite. You see, this definition does not hold education, work experience and other skills constant; it just takes the aggregate average of salaries earned by men, and puts them against salaries earned by women. Though not an accurate representation of the actual gender wage gap, this is still indicative of regressive societal gender roles.
For instance, around the globe, women are employed in less lucrative professions. While men are expected to work in STEM fields, women are often discouraged, or worse, not taken seriously. Society puts them in the role of a caretaker; someone who will look after the children, family and home. Because of this, women end up working less paid hours than men, as they are busy doing the unpaid work at home. Years of data suggests that women frequently take time off of work to start a family while the man doesn’t. (The paternity leave is still a very modern concept). So tell me, you Schulich-going, liberal-minded, logical person, does it not make sense for there to be a gender wage gap? Clearly, if women work less paid hours than men, they will earn a low...

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...rinters are accessible, humans are going to travel to Mars, and yet we are still not fairly compensating women for their labour value? What’s even more angering is the fact that I’m not even considering racial discrimination in this argument. I can write a separate article on data evidence suggesting the unfortunate fact that women of colour are disadvantaged in career opportunities and wages; regardless of education and skills.
You can either take a deep breathe, and accept this unfair truth, or you can actually do something about it. Paying women more just because men are paid a certain amount is not really going to fix anything. It will only make pursuit of gender equality to be ostracized as ingenious. Until we acknowledge women as capable members of society who will offer just as much value as men, there will be no real change. Please tell me that you agree.

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