Gender And Gender : The Pay Gap, And Work And Family Balance

​​Gender is defined as whatever behaviors and attitudes a group considers proper for its males and females. Unlike sex, gender is something that we learn from the day we are born. “Young children begin to acquire gender role stereotypes at about the same time they develop gender identity and by the age of 3 or 4 most children” (Amanda Youmans). Peers, community, media, religion and our upbringing all play a role in the understanding of our culture and what is considered acceptable for males and females. When the sex of a child is revealed, they are automatically placed into a gender specific role with certain expectations. There are things in this world such as colors, toys, media depiction and taught behaviors that play into these gender roles.

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.

Many people confuse the definition of gender and sex. “Gender, on the other hand, refers to the meanings, values, and characteristics that people ascribe to different sexes. Sex is a biological concept, determined on the basis of individual 's primary sex characteristics.” (Blackstone) Society gives social cues on the appropriate behavior for each sex. For example, women are to exert more feminine traits such as being dependent, emotional, passive, innocent, nurturing, and/or self-critical. On the contrary, men should be more

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.

Devor starts by be explaining how gender identity starts between eighteen months and two years. Children then start to understand which specific group the fall into when it comes to gender. Culture also plays a large role in this because different cultures have different thoughts as to how gender is perceived. Masculine and feminine characteristics are usually believed to be opposites of each other. Masculine attributes consist of being competitive, aggressive, and territorial. On the other hand, females are maternal, caring, and sensitive. Gender identity can also be seen through the way individuals speak, their body posture, and personal goals. Society plays a big role in the definitions of masculinity and femininity since children learn values based on the settings around them.I agree with Devor when it comes to the belief that society shapes how individuals understand gender.Gender role characteristics reflect the conceptions that our society sees

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,

Past research has shown that due to social pressures women are steered toward less rigorous or demanding college majors and career choices (Chamberlain, 2016). This is to allow for gender norms of women taking a disproportionate level of child-rearing and elder care, which put pressure on women to accept jobs that are more flexible with lower pay (Chamberlain, 2016). Fields such as finance and medicine (high pay sectors) are less flexible and more demanding (Miller, 2016). Women tend to hold more caretaking jobs, e.g. teaching, education, healthcare and social work (low pay sectors) and men hold more technical jobs, e.g. engineering and computer science (Frank, 2015). Current research also found evidence of a motherhood penalty for women and a marriage premium for men (Blau & Kahn, 2016). As motherhood is associated with a wage

The gender wage gap has been a problem for years, however, even after identifying the issue, little progress has been made to fix it. While there are currently many efforts to push women into physical sciences and higher wage-earning jobs, only time will tell the results of these efforts. Despite these pushes, the reason behind little success being made may result from one of many other factors contributing to women’s future career decisions. For instance, women, “position themselves differently for careers, marriage, and parenthood while sharing an ideology of gender difference” (67 Gendered Futures). In other words, women plan their futures based on the desires to have children. While this idea is not inherently bad, the dangerous part of the ideology is that women further believe there is an, “Incompatibility between motherhood and full-time careers” (70 Gendered Futures). Furthermore, this causes women to commit less to their education, but moreso there post-educational jobs. But aside from simply those women who become tied down by toxic, future marriage ideologies, there are other factors that reflect the difference in pays.

For example, girls will wear dresses and play with dolls, while boys roll around in mud and play with trucks. From the beginning of time that’s how many of us grew up to know it. Gender is a basic perception of how we see ourselves, and what it shapes us to be in the future. Growing up in a family of three girls, with a father whose work primarily took him away from home most of the time, I was taught to be the “man of the house”. From a young age, I learned how to do the basic things that a man would be known to do around the house, like mowing the lawn, or hanging a picture frame.

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.

Gender is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones. Gender dictates how many people live out their lives. But It’s important to ask ourselves why this idea of “gender” has so much control over people. Although some may argue that gender is solely determined by the sex of a person, gender is a social construct made up by old traditions and enforced gender roles based on the sex.

I agree that the Social Learning Theory explains the most differences in genders. The theory comes from observations. A child does not know what clothing or accessories to use without observing an adult of their gender. One cannot hide what the eye sees. Every scream or laugh was seen from a child’s perspective. The right and wrong are taught from a family member or peer. For example, the Bobo experiment was aggressive actions carried from the adult to the child. The child only terrorized the doll because the adult was. As a child, you are taught to repeat and carry yourself like a well-mannered human of society. For future reference, a child is always watching you.

Society has clearly defined boundaries between what is considered to be male or female. The development of an individual’s gender role is formed by interactions with those in close proximity. Society constantly tells us how we should look, act and live based on gender. Family, friends and the media have a tremendous impact on how these roles are formed and the expected behavior of each gender role.