Shelby Stream
Mrs. Stuckey
Composition I
21 December 2016
Salary Inequality If the United States is an equal country, then why are men and women still paid different salaries? The U.S. is said to be a country of freedom and equality, but the crucial part of every individual’s life, getting a job and working, is not equal. Men and women in America are separated by a long-existing wage gap. Though the gap may only be a few cents difference, over time, it adds up to a large amount of money. Education seems like a solution to the problem, but it does not help. Also, the gap can hurt young girl’s self-esteem as well as making it harder for single mothers to care for themselves and their children. To achieve a truly equal country, the pay gap
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Companies, for starters, could begin to fix the problem by publishing all employee’s salaries (Miller, Claire). One reason the gap exists is from individuals not knowing what others in the same field earn (Bloch). This allows anyone to see the differences in what men and women earn for the same jobs. This may in turn make women want to negotiate their salaries, knowing they earn less than men (Miller, Kevin). On average, 51.5% of men negotiate their salaries while only 12.5% of women negotiate theirs (Miller, Claire). If women learn to negotiate more and better, the gap will start shrinking. Employers can also ignore an employee’s past salaries so they cannot base their new salary on an old one (Miller, Claire). This would then make an employer pay an individual for the job they are currently doing rather than basing their pay on an old job that maybe did not interest them or fit their personality. Changes can also be made at the federal level. The Paycheck Act can be put into place to improve the Equal Pay Act (Miller, Kevin). The Equal Pay Act states that employers must pay men and women equally for doing the same work (The Equal Pay Act). By the law being changed, both men and women could finally be paid the same salary. These are all simple solutions that can make a huge impact. Women could live in a world where they are not discriminated against because of their gender and feel equally as important and valuable as men. …show more content…
With simple solutions like negotiation skills and laws, the problem can begin to be solved. As a result, men and women can work in the career they want and not worry about being discriminated against due to their gender. Gender should never be the deciding factor of what an individual earns, it should be based on their skills and how well they perform in the field they chose. It can also certainly be said that a single mother could possibly get enough money through child support and her own job, but that might not always be the case. Maybe the individual paying child support does not make much money in their job, then in turn cannot pay the single mother much money. In this situation, the extra money that a woman would lose over the course of her career would be tremendously helpful. Therefore, by having equal salaries, it would be easier for single mothers to care for their children. If the wage gap is eliminated, then salaries would not be based on gender and single mothers would be better off. This would then again point the United States in the direction of
“Equal play. Equal pay.” –U.S. Women’s National Team (Reiher). The gender pay gap is surprisingly still a large problem today. Not only in soccer, but in every sport women exert the most effort, yet they do not receive the credit. The U.S. Woman’s National Team should receive an equal amount of pay as the men’s team because they have won more titles, they are better soccer players, and they bring in more income.
It is not up for debate whether women are discriminated against in the workplace, it is evident in census data; in 2013, among full-time, year-round workers, women were paid 78 percent of what men were paid. It is said that the organizations that are pro-equal pay, including some unions, support the idea that the government should set wages for all jobs. To the contrary, the organizations that are proponents of equal pay are not for job wages being set by the government-they wish to have the discrimination taken out of pay scales from within the company. Commonly, this pay gap is attributed to the fact that women in the United States are still expected to attend to familial obligations over work.
In our constitution we are all equal, but why are we not paid equally? The gender wage gap movement will result in social change because it is bringing awareness to women in the workplace getting paid lower than her male counterpart. On the other hand, many other people may argue that the gap is not because of gender, it is because men work longer hours compared to women since they have children to take care of. I believe that this movement could improve by making people more aware of the through more examples such as the Women’s U.S.A. Soccer Team wanting more pay and equal pay.
Equal pay is a problem on a global scale. Over 145 countries have a documented pay wage gap (Werft). One would hope the United States would have the smallest wage gap, but in 2016, the United States was in only 45th place in the smallest wage gap (“Rankings”). In fact, most women in the United States only make $0.77 compared to a whole dollar they should earn. The state with the worst wage gap is Louisiana, with only, on average $0.69 for every man’s dollar (“Rankings”). One in three of the 15.2 million families headed by women have fallen below the poverty line, leaving their children to suffer in poverty
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.
Women have made significant strides in society, proving themselves to be as capable as men in the workforce. However, while women are making equal contributions, men and women are not earning equal wages. Even though the Equal Pay Act was established in 1963, women continue to earn lower wages than men over half a century later. This inequality not only affects women as individuals but has a detrimental effect on the national economy. The gender wage gap in the United States should end because it is unjust; correcting it would have social and economic benefits for the U.S.
America was founded in 1776, but it wasn’t until more than 150 years later when women were even allowed to vote. Although we have come a long way since then, women in this country are still not equal to men. The wage gap is a commonly cited example of this, but it’s not what it seems to be. On first glance it seems that women are paid only 79 cents to a man’s dollar, and
The inequality of pay between a man and a woman grows when the woman's race is taken into consideration, statistically, white women earn seventy-eight cents, African-American women earn sixty-four cents and Latina women earn fifty-six cents for every dollar earned by a white man as stated on www. whitehouse.gov. This significant wage gap is not just a bunch of numbers -- it has real life consequences that affect real life women: women with growing children to feed, women of color, disabled women, aging women longing retirement, and your own
For the first time in history women had surpassed men in the paid labor force. Yet, instead of provoking an equality among the sexes, the figures play no statistical significance, as women still try to bridge the gap between their inequality among their male counterparts. One apparent setback for women in the workplace is their unequal payment, “Women workers are still paid less than men, currently about-three quarters of mens income if they work full time and year round”(Institute for Womens’s Policy Research, 2010). Although there women are beginning to integrate into vastly male populated jobs throughout the labor force “… women in America today earn 78 cents to a man’s dollar, according to the U.S Census Bureau, and have struggled for decades to achieve pay for equal work” (Riley 2). Not only has this pay gap significantly effected the nature of women throughout the county, it has also violated the bill that Congress passed called the Equal Pay Act of 1963. The Equal Pay Act was signed in order to establish a more sound and equal treatment among the sexes. It noted that an employer was unable to discriminate employees on grounds of gender, yet as figures denote today, this bill seems to not possess enough jurisdiction over the wage gap. The wage gap has contributed to various problems within the United States, especially among single mothers who do not have a supporting male figure within their household.
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 occurred from the long past time and it is still going and going now in the society. In the last century, women and men mostly did not have the same equal roles in the
Even though men and women who work in the same work place doing the same exact job should be getting the same exact pay, also known as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, this matter is still a constant battle. For example, women earned 79 cents for every dollar that a man earns (whitehouse.gov). This statistic, referred to as the gender gap, has been reoccurring for decades and although the numbers have changed throughout the years, the gap
Wage gap hurts women across the board by suppressing their income and making it way harder to balance their work and family. Every working class woman is affected by this
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
Today women have rights to owning a property and furthering their education with no issues. However with the years to come i’d hope that there will no longer be any wage gap. In my opinion one way to challenge this way gap is addressing the issue of male having more privilege than women because we are now living in modern times. We are no longer