Gender Inequality : 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 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.

The reason why I have composed this informative essay on the chosen topic gender inequality: the pay gap is because I thought it’s an important topic to be explored and it ties into economic inequality. With my revisions, I focused on clarifying certain information I put into my essay from other sources so that women could have better explanations on how this information supports the overall paper. I attempted to cover three core areas that may be contributing to the pay gap in hopes that this would guide their attention on the most critical information. I did confuse some students with where I was going with my essay and the issue at hand. Some peers assumed I was informing them on the existence of the pay gap rather than my intended

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.

The gender pay gap is a problem nationwide in the United States. It is a phenomenon that affects women of all education levels, ages, and races. Although it varies in a state-by-state basis, the pay gap is prevalent in all states (Miller, 2017). The issue is also occupation-wide, meaning that nearly every occupation will have a gender gap (Miller, 2017). Statistics from The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap have shown that while an increase in education help women earn more, it does not eliminate the problem all together or close the gap (Miller, 2017). As of recent statistics, women are paid approximately 80 cents for every dollar a man makes, however, the gap is worse for women of color, especially, when compared to the salary of that of white men; African American women earn 63% of the salary that white men earn, Native American women earn 58%, and the largest gap is for Latina women, who earn only 54% (Miller, 2017).

The gender pay gap in is the difference of paid between a man and a woman doing the same work. This is not just a United States problem as it can be seen across the world in many fields of work. There are many factors that contribute to the gender pay gap and there is not one clear solution for these issues. Regardless of a solution the results of the wage gap are apparent, it mainly effects women as it lowers their wages as they are paid less for equal work, have penalized them for having children, and shows bias within employers. It unfair that women are getting frequently paid less regardless of education, age, and field.

Throughout history, even in today's world, women’s achievements are not valued as high as men’s achievements. This has been happening ever since rulers and social classes back in ancient rome. Even in today’s world, women are still discriminated against by females are paid only 84 cents per dollar paid to men on average. Others may say, the statistic that men are paid more per hour account to how females take more time of work, or that women just take jobs that pay less. Anti-wage gap people say that no one is stopping the women of America to go into higher paying jobs, females choose the lower paying jobs to go into by themselves. Nevertheless, the wage gap is not for these reasons, it is purely a statistic

The gender wage gap is a widespread and pressing issue. It is also a highly debated subject in the United States in which some refuse to even believe exists at all.

The gender pay gap is a deabatable issue. Some people might say that there is no pay gap while others insist that there is an injustice happening. I am here to say that there is no gender pay gap. The reason why a woman would earn $0.77 to a mans dollar is due to many factors. Some of thes factors include profession, experience, and willingness to work longer hours. A survey was conducted by Georgetown University and they found that the top five well paying professions were all dominated by males except for one. This shows that the reason why a man earns more than a woman is because men choose to work in higher paying careers. Another study demonstrated that male workers were more willing to work more hours and do laborious work than women.

On June 10th 1963, the Equal Pay Act was passed. This was the first time that it became illegal for women to be paid less wages than men, but this paper will argue in the U.S. today the gender wage gap still exists. The definition of gender wage gap as stated by the U.S. government is defined as women who work full time or salary based jobs who receive less earnings than their male counterparts who work equal level jobs (“Equal Pay,” n.d.).[] This analysis will focus on the years of 2012 to 2014, and in these years it is clear that the gender wage gap exists. The topic of gender wage gap sociologically important for many reasons. The most obvious being that women who are in a position that requires them to provide for others will have less money than they should based on their job and skill set. Secondly, being that if women are making less than men for the same amount of skill and work, the workplace is telling the woman that the man is more valuable for the same work, thus saying that the man is superior to the woman. All in all, the gender wage gap has poor sociological implications, and the data analysis in the following paper will prove its existence.

The gender pay gap is generally measured as the variance between men and women’s average weekly pay equivalent of full-time earnings, expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings (WGEA, 2017b). Unequal pay, where women and men do the same work and are paid at differing rates, based on

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