Gender Income Gap

After years of Civil Rights Movements and Pay Equity Acts, as of 2014, women still only make 79 cents to a man 's every dollar. Although the wage gap has shrunk since the 1970’s, progress has recently stalled and chances of it vanishing on its own is unlikely. The gains that American women have made towards labor market experience and skills is tremendous. In fact, women account for 47% of labor workforce and 49.3% of American jobs. But despite of women’s strides, a gender pay gap still exists. Experts suggest that it will take 100 years to close the gap at the rate employers and legislators are working to create solutions. But by allowing women to work in higher paying positions and by proposing and updating pay equity laws, the gender gap can finally be diminished.

Women have been discriminated against throughout the history of the United States. Women were typically associated with being “mothers” and having to take care of the children along with other so called home “duties.” They were not allowed to vote until fairly recently. Astonishingly, women in the United States were not allowed to have their own bank account before 1974. There is no reasonable excuse for such restrictions, except to keep women under the control of men. Altogether, the United States’ has a history of discriminating against women. Women have historically been treated as second class citizens, especially in the workplace, which kept them from doing certain jobs that were meant for men. The reality is that women have proven more than capable of doing labor intensive work. World War II proved that women were more than capable of replacing men. Women’s rights in the United States have definitely been improved, but they continue to be discriminated against in the workplace.

But since 2000, progress has all but flatlined. A big underlying factor is the slowdown in women’s wage growth. That’s what helped propel the closure of the gap in earlier decades, but women have seen a standstill in wage growth since about 2001, as has most of the country.Women make less than men, on average, for a number of reasons. About 10 percent of it is thanks to different work experience, often because women are much more likely to take breaks from work to care for family members. The drop of women in the labor force over the last decade can be tied to the country’s lack of paid family leave, child care assistance, and support for flexible schedules.Some of it is also due to the fact that women end up working in areas that tend to pay less. But that doesn’t mean they can escape the gap by choosing different paths. They make less in virtually every industry and every job. And while getting more education boosts earnings, women make less than men with the same educational credentials at every level and even make less than their former male classmates when they graduate from top-tier universities. Some of that difference may be due to different majors or grades, but when salaries in the first year after graduation are compared while taking the college, major, grades, and other factors into account, women still experience a significant wage gap.Discrimination therefore plays a role. Economists consistently find a portion of the gap that can’t be explained by a variety of other factors. Studies have found that people of both genders are inclined to give men more money, especially if the woman is a mother. Meanwhile, women’s job performance is continuously underrated compared to men’s. Therefore in the workforce are discriminated

The issue of gender inequality in the workplace affects many. The issue of discrimination in wages has been an issue since women were allowed to hold a job and has continued, and possibly progressively gotten better, but it has also gotten progressively worse as it is easier to hide this

The extensive studies conducted over the past 50 years on gender based wage gap show that even though the gap has narrowed over the years, it still irrefutably exists. The laws such as The Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibit gender based wage discrimination, and The Civil Rights Act, helped reduce the wage gap over the years but did not help eradicate it. Numerous studies and scholarly research continue to show the differences in the earnings of men and women, for equal work. Figure 1 shows the wage discrimination from the 1960s to the year 2015.

Although many people are now bringing up a pay gap between genders, there is something being over looked that proves there isn’t a pay gap, but something else. The Gender Income Gap is a supposed payment gap between men and women, stating that to every man’s dollar a woman only gets payed seventy cents. Statements like theses can grab people’s attention and get them to believe this without much proof of it actually existing. Most people get there information about the gap from surveys over all women and men average pay, this is not a good representation of the topic because it doesn’t go into any detail of actual jobs and difference of pay. There are many other factors that going into the pay gap that would make it into something else not necessarily a pay gap. There are several solutions for this problem most of them aren’t necessarily for equality but for the gain of one sex at the cost of the rights of another. The one I will be talking about later doesn’t need government intervention and doesn’t need for one sex to do more. This solution will come from “changes in the labor market, especially how jobs are structured and remunerated to enhance temporal flexibility.”1

The gender wage gap issue is prevalent in our society and drives many political and social discussions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics states a 23% difference between the wages of men and females, and this data leads to the infamous idea that women make “77 cents for every dollar a man makes.” Many individuals interpret this by assuming that women are discriminated in the work place. Yet most, if not all, of the gender wage gap is a result of individual choice, rather than gender discrimination, and statistical analysis, personal motives/factors such as occupation, hours worked, experience, etc. show that the gender wage gap is highly inflated and misleading.

The gender wage gap has been a substantial subject that has had numerous studies done, that included extensive debates and commentary for the past three centuries. In fact, the gender wage gap predominantly affects women. For example, in 2003 people reported that women make eighty cents for every dollar men make(Gender Pay 8). For one thing, women should not be getting paid less for doing the same job as men. The individual hired at the same time as another individual should receive the same starting pay until it is shown they deserve more pay than they are receiving. If the wage gap continues to grow at the rate it has been, it will be another fifty years before women make the same as men (Discrimination 1). The workforce has grown a considerable

The gender income inequality in Australia does not only place a significant stress upon Australian women and their families but can also damage the economic growth rate of a nation as a whole. Having ethical rights to income, employment and opportunities for women will not just increase personal independence and security but will decrease the dependency on government support including reduction of child poverty rates.

Stereotypes in workplace can and do lead to wage discrimination. On average, women’s wages are only 81 percent of men’s wages for doing the exact same job. (Kelly, Young, and Clark) One common stereotype is that women don’t need equal pay because they are married, so their income is just a supplement to their husband’s income. Whether or not a there is another income in a woman’s family should have no bearing on what she gets paid. There is no justification for paying a woman less than a man when they are both doing the exact same thing.

The article published by the Business Insider presents five charts which show various gender pay discrepancies that men and women face. The various factors presented in the charts include fields of college education, gender wage gap among several races, age groups, and comparisons among different states throughout the USA. The article presents the gender wage gap while taking into account that there is a wage gap among women of different races, ethnicities, and religions. The charts also show a disparity for pay between women in the

Gender discrimination might increase inequality at the work place. Ledbetter claimed that she was consistently given poor assessments at work by her supervisors and that is why after so many years of hard work she was still earning far less

There are many issues regarding gender inequality in the U.S. One of the many examples is gender inequality in the workforce. Women are unequally treated in the workforce due sex segregation. One of the main issues in the workforce is hiring discrimination. Hiring discrimination in the U.S. is illegal under the Civil Rights Act that was passed in 1964 (Pg. 275 Sociology project 2.0), but the law has not totally ended discrimination. Many businesses have biased leaders. Women are more likely to get laid off due to “company cutbacks and reorganization.” They have a more difficult time getting promoted, even if they are very successful. “Some employers discriminate against women simply because they are mothers, although in most cases this is

“The wage gap has narrowed by more than one-third since 1960”(Hegewisch, 2010) and “the share of companies with female CEOs increased more than six-fold” (Warner, 2014) since 1997. As well as the truth that men and women’s earnings differ for many other reasons besides the presence of sexism. “Discrimination in labor market, in education/retiring programs, unequal societal norms at home and the constrained decisions men and women make about work and home issues” (Hegewisch, 2010) are also factors that can contribute to the unequal treatment of man and women in the workplace. Yet even with most of these variables removed women are still being paid less than men, sexually harassed in the workplace and hold very little managerial positions.

Women continue to face disadvantages in the workplace in regards to not receiving equal pay as well. There are many instances where women have the same or more qualifications to do a job than their male counterparts but do not receive the same pay. This difference in pay is not only related to gender differences but also racial differences. Women employees of different racial backgrounds tend to earn less money than their white female and male counterparts. Many women of color often face discrimination when applying to jobs and are overlooked for a position despite having the qualifications to do the work. When they are hired to these occupations they are not receiving the same pay as their white female counterparts. This double bind that minority women face within the work place continues to lead to economic hardships. Regarding women in the workplace in general, due to society’s high regard for men they are often not promoted to positions of authority or receive equal pay because people assume that women are inferior workers. (Buchanan, p205-207)