Gender Wage Gap Analysis

Before 1880, women did not have as many rights as they do today in the United States of America. Women were not able to initiate divorce; they did not have custody over their children; they were not entitled to their own wages; they could not vote; etcetera. This movement was necessary to create a more just and fair society for Americans because women deserved to be treated as well as men were. These things were changed as a result of many suffragists who fought for women’s rights for years. Three women who devoted their lives to gaining equal rights for women were Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Without these women among others, women in America would not be treated as they are today.

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

On the basis of gender, women continue to be paid less for the same work as men; however, women are outnumbered by men in the highest-paying jobs and dominate in the lowest-paying jobs.

Many believe that those who don't have education can’t have wages that are higher than a minimum wage job. In some cases this is true but Hispanics and blacks who have received the same amount of education in a certain field to those of the Asian and White races still make less. However, looking just at those with a bachelor’s degree or more education, wage gaps by gender, race and ethnicity persist. College-educated black and Hispanic men earn roughly 80% the hourly wages of white college educated men ($25 and $26 vs. $32, respectively). White and Asian college-educated women also earn roughly 80% the hourly wages of white college-educated men ($25 and $27, respectively). However, black and Hispanic women with a college degree earn only about

The most well-known limit placed upon women in a work setting is the wage gap, or the difference between a man’s salary and a woman’s salary. Authors dive into the subject of the current wage gap because of its presence in modern society, and one author who does speak out about the topic is Caroline Fredrickson. Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, writes in her book Under the Bus: How Working Women Are Being Run Over about how the gap between a man and woman’s salaries does exist in today’s progressive society. To argue her case, Fredrickson reveals, “In the past decade, women have not made any progress at all, with the wage gap overall remaining stubbornly at 77 percent…” (44). This gap of seventy seven percent implies that the majority of women are paid only seventy seven percent of what a man is paid in any given position.

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.

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 prominent issue which is fought for in feminism today. In the past, this standard has been justified due to the fact that women were more likely to be stay-at-home moms, and were less likely to have jobs or college degrees. Today, women are getting comparable education to men, and working comparable jobs, yet the issue remains. The gender wage gap is a women’s rights issue based on the old-fashioned role of women in society which needs to be fought against and decreased in the United States during this current political and social climate.

The gender wage gap in the U.S. has been a topic of debate in politics through most of the 21st century. In 2015, women were paid 80 percent of what men were paid (SIMPLE TRUTH). This number is considerably smaller than that of the 1960’s because of women’s progress in education and participation in the workforce (SIMPLE TRUTH). The wage gap can have adverse lifelong effects on a woman’s life. Because women are paid less than men, a woman will receive less social security, pensions, and other resources when they retire than a man would (Fischer & Hayes, 2013). There is a common stigma that women do not get paid as much as men because they do not ask for higher wages but not everything can be “explained

Frequently throughout American history, the woman has been viewed as the domestic housewife. Becoming a domesticated woman was essentially their way of life. From a young age they were expected to learn how to clean, cook, sew, and take care of the children (Kendall-Tackett, Web). When they were older, they led their household with the same mannerisms. Stigmas were placed on women that differed from the traditions of society. Such stigmas basically marked them as “impure.” The housewives sole job throughout the majority of American history was to cater to the needs of the family within the house. This social norm started to deteriorate post World War II. Colossal amounts of women had inundated into the work force and had no intentions of leaving. The pressing debate of the woman in the kitchen versus the woman in the office waged in the 1950’s through the 1960’s (“The Fight for Reproductive Rights” Web). The social significance of the American female gender role passively shifted out of focus. Now, it is more accepted for women to take on different roles, even male oriented roles, outside of the house and in

The target of this analysis is to explore the troubling condition of pay inequities between men and women in the Unites States, using the liberal ideology, constructionist approach and basic framework of the social problem process by Joel Best. Accordingly, this paper organizes this exploration into the six sections correlating with each stage of the Best framework. The first section is Stage 1: Claimsmakers which introduces the source(s) making claims about the troubling condition of economic inequality specifically as it relates to the gap in pay between genders. In addition, this area specifies the ideological perspective of this analysis and provides the grounds, warrants and conclusions used to evaluate the claims. Furthermore, this area offers a counterpoint to the claim along with its ideology, grounds, warrants and conclusions. This leads to the second section of exploration, Stage 2: Media Coverage, which describes how the media reports on the delta in compensation between

As Claudia Goldin, a professor of economics at Harvard University who has spent years researching the gender gap states, “By comparing the 469 occupations in the US Census, she found that women disproportionately holding certain jobs only accounted for about 25% of the difference in earnings between men and women. Factors within each occupation overwhelmingly accounted for differences in pay.” In her findings she found out that only 25% of the jobs do not have equal pay because of the type of work women are doing. This means that even with men and women having the same jobs, that the women will still get paid less than the men do. Another Economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found, “Differences in occupation and industry explain about 49 percent of the wage gap, but 41 percent of the wage gap is not explained by differences in educational attainment, experience, demographic characteristics, job type, or union status” (Stevenson).This is just another statement backing up that the gender pay gap is not happening, just because women take lower paying jobs than men. It says that even if women do the exact same job as men, women still will get paid less than men do

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 stereotypes that make women the primary caretakers of the children actually has a great effect on whether or not they get a raise, “social stereotypes that frame women as caretakers first, and employees second is possibly the biggest factor contributing to the gender wage gap” (O’Neill). The gender wage gap is still something that affects women greatly. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was supposed to abolish wage discrimination based on sex, however in 2013 female full-time workers made only 78 cents for every dollar earned by men. Women and men are both working in the same jobs and are both working as hard as the other so why is there still wage discrimination present? In “Legalizing Gender Inequality: Courts Markets and Unequal Pay for Women

Almost half the workforce is composed of women. They are the equal, if not main, source of income in four out of ten families. In fact, women earn more college and graduate degrees than men. But yet, on average, men still earn considerably more money than women. In 2013, female full-time workers made only 78 cents for every dollar earned by men, which is a gender wage gap of 22 percent. Men earn more money in virtually every single occupation for which there is sufficient earnings data for both men and women , than women, on average.