Analysis: The Gender Pay Gap

The average woman in the United States makes approximately $82.90 for every dollar their male counterparts make. (Elsesser). While those 20 cents may seem inconsequential to you, they add up. Losing that much money all year can be the difference between someone living in poverty, and someone living a nice life. The gender pay gap is the cause of this problem. Around the world, women are losing money just because of what gender they are. The gender wage gap is a huge problem, that can only be solved by going to extreme measures, such as requiring people to release their employees wage gap and passing new laws.

Simultaneously, the gender pay gap has financial effects not just on the women, yet their families too. Studies have shown that American families with children count on a women’s earnings as a massive part of their family’s income, and many are the head of the household. Data demonstrates that “seventy percent of mothers with children under 18 participate in the labor force, with over 75 percent employed full-time. Mothers are the primary or sole earners for 40 percent of households with children under 18 today, compared with 11 percent in 1960. Women’s participation in the U.S. labor force has climbed since WWII: from 32.7 percent in 1948 to 56.8 percent in 2016” (Dewolf). Now women make up more than half of the U.S. workforce, the gap in earning deciphers to $7968 per year in median earnings for a high school graduate, $11,616 for a college graduate, and $19,360 for a professional school graduate. By and large, this gap effects hundreds of millions of women and their families, and lag them back hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout their life.

The gender pay gap is the difference in pay earned by men and the pay earned by women.( Pay Equity Commission, 2012). There are various ways in measuring the pay gap between genders, such as full- time or full- year wage. Statistics Canada data ( 2012) displayed that the gender pay gap in Ontario was 26% for full- time and full- year employments, which means for every C$1 earned by a man, a woman earned 74 cents( Pay Equity Commission,2012).The pay gap has been narrowing slowly over time compared to the how it was in 1987, which was 36%. However the gender wage gap is still a problem that exists in the society. I will discuss about the feminist theory and how it can be interpreted in the gender pay gap of our society, especially in regards to celebrities.

The gender pay gap is the difference between male and female earnings averaged in percentages. This difference in pay due to gender seems like it would be an obsolete practice in the twenty-first century, but it is real and is affecting millions of women and households in the country. In 2014, women working full time in the United States were paid 79 percent on average of what men were being paid, which is a gap of approximately 21 percent. This means that in the United States, females earned 94 cents on average to every dollar earned by males. According to one study by the Department of Labor’s Chief Economist, a typical 25-year-old woman working full time would earn $5,000 less over the course of her working career than a typical 25-year old man working in the same career. The reason why this pay gap exists does expand into other factors such as education, experience, the work being performed, qualifications, age, and ethnicity which are taken into account. The studies being conducted on the pay gap has economists verifying that discrimination is the best overall explanation and factor of the difference in pay between males and females.

Today, the working industry has made substantial progress towards gender equality pay while adding numerous career opportunities for woman in the workforce. However, society still poses ethical concerns between women and men regarding gender pay gap and discrimination for the same job function that apparently still exist. To put it differently, women regrettably have struggled as they continue in trying to make headway in gaining the respect of the working-class industry since the mid-1900’s. In some cases, researchers state that women in the workforce will not get paid equally for the same job function because of discrimination of gender gap. According to one research study, “there is still a gender pay gap. Women continue to earn considerably less than men on average” (Blau & Kahn, 2007, p. 8). While men have the higher ground of work tenure there should be equal pay for women with the same qualifications; I will argue the concerns of gender gap pay while using the utilitarian theory, deontological theory and the objection of moral reasoning to prove the ethical theory.

There is no single agreeable number of how much a woman get paid less than a man. In Flex Work's Potential Role in Gender Pay Gap by Max Mihelich argues “Current numbers show that, on average, a woman earns 77 cents for every dollar a man earns” (Mihelich, 1) 77 cents is generally the number used to argue the wage gap, however there is some concerns of how this number was determine. Christina Hoff Sommers is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, she believes that its just feminist, celebrities, and our politicians spreading this “wage gap myth”. In an interview Sommer stated that the way this number is produce is by “Calculating the median earning of all women working full-time by the median earnings of all men working full-time” (Sommer 4). She believes that this does not show a gender wage

I agree with that article that believes that the gender pay gap is true because they show higher quality information from a trustworthy source. According to aauw.org, in the 1960s women got paid 60% of the amount men got paid and in 2015 women get paid around 75% of the amount that men get paid, but since the 2000s the rate of the gender pay gap in slowly getting smaller and smaller. Aauw projected at this rate the gender pay gap won’t close until 2152, that is over 100 years of women getting substantially less than men. They also noticed that the pay gap gets larger as a women gets older, a woman between 55 and 64 gets paid only 79% of the amount of a man of that age group. According to forbes.com, the gender pay gap was closed on April 12,

Initially women saw jobs and careers as rights that had previously been denied to them. As women entering the job market was motivated less by desire and more by necessity and the need to earn money. They wanted to be known the way men had always identified themselves; by their jobs, careers, and the level of success to which they had risen. Status, not salary, was the prime mover of the first wave of women to assault the previously all male worlds of medicine, and the corporate citadel. As women entered the workplace they became more motivated by necessity and the need to earn more money.

In Australia over the last 20 years, it is documented that a person’s income and wages, differs based on one’s gender, known as the gender pay gap (The Conversation, 2017; Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA), 2017c). This paper will discuss what a gender pay gap is, various economic explanations for this gap, summarise sociological responses, and identify possible policy recommendations and their implications.

In his article, Truth and Myth on the Gender Pay Gap, Steven Horwitz elaborates on the confusion about what is true regarding the gender pay gap. Stating that, “Whether the gender pay gap is a myth depends upon exactly what claim either side is making.” (1) Making the claim that depending on what one says about the gap determines whether or not it is true or false. He goes on to elaborate on what is a myth. Saying, “Why would people claim this is a myth? Two reasons. First, if the critics are claiming that the 80% number means that when men and women with the exact same skills and experience and preferences do the exact same work that women get paid 80 cents for every dollar men do, they are wrong. That is not what the 80% figure shows.” (1) He says that the difference in pay is not how the media and other makes it seem to be, that for every dollar a man makes, a woman makes 80 cents etc, and that the difference is actually explainable by the different and varied life choices that men and women make.

If men are being paid even a penny more than women for the same work, then that suggests an attitude of disrespect for women. For years the average women income was solely passed on how much her male partner made; allowing her to be the stay at home parent. Women a far more likely now a days likely to deal with the dual demands of household work and job work. Of course there are great examples of women who have successfully carried out both, however, statistics show that women make about 80-82 to the dollars compared to men. Many of these jobs are set at this pay because the greatest number of women in the work force have white-collared jobs- clerical, sales, professional, technical, and managerial. Jobs in the past were never viewed important

It is important to address the systemic inequalities of the gender pay gap. To do this, this essay will use Bacchi (2006) approach to analyse the text “Speech to HRINZ: The reasons for the Gender Pay Gap” by MP Paula Bennett. This essay will illustrate the theoretical perspective of liberal feminism to show the understanding of the problem, and the solutions of the gender pay gap. This essay will also look at two other theoretical perspectives, social democratic, and anti-racism and discuss their viewpoints and solutions towards the problem.

Inequality has been a dilemma for several years in countless different ways. A persistent problem with disproportion of income between women and men has been lingering within many companies in the United States. It has been said that women earn less money than men in the workplace for many different reasons. Some of these reasons are that women have not spent enough time in the office to be rewarded with raises and bonuses because they are busy with their home lives and taking care of their children, they, unlike men, have been taught to be timid and unaggressive which ultimately steers them away from requesting higher pay, or they do not meet the qualifications to receive promotions (Hymowitz, 2008). This essay is in response to On

Even though it is against the law to pay women a lower wage based on gender, a significant earnings gap exists. Women earn less than men in almost every line of work regardless of age, race, ethnic background or level of education. This study discusses the disparity of income between men and women, and the primary factors that contribute to the disparity. It then looks at some of the legislation that has been passed or is under consideration to address the issue. Finally, it concludes that there are many reasons for the disparity other than gender discrimination. Men and women are motivated by different things and therefore make different choices. Gender discrimination

As a progressive society political, social, and economic structures change continually. Despite these changes there are several areas in which change is not as extensive, take the workplace for example. According to Statistics Canada as of 2016, women represented slightly more than 50% of the Canadian workforce and on average women earn 73.5 cent for every dollar men earn. (Canada, G. O. 2017)