Pay : Less For Women

“Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work” -Susan B. Anthony. Countless women, even here in the U.S. have some sort of the wage gap. The wage gap is the difference between the median earnings of women relative to median earnings of men. In this case, women earn a significant amount less than men. Although the wage gap has gotten smaller over the years, the wage gap still has a long way to go. Women deserve better than just minimum earnings. Full time, working women should obtain the best promotions and benefits. Women that work just as tough and have the equivalent qualifications as men do still earn less, and that is just unacceptable. The wage gap should be abolished on behalf of women of color and their struggle, equal pay is a global problem, equal pay benefits employers and workers, and the wage gap accumulates over time.

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.

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.

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 the United States forms a slightly mixed feeling. On one hand, after years of opposition to the earnings of women compared to men. There has been a large increase in women's earnings since the 1970s. The gender pay gap in the United States is measured through the female to male average yearly earnings for a full-time, year-round worker. Previously, a woman earned 77 cents for every dollar that a male gets. Since 1980, the gap has narrowed by 16.8 cents, improving from 60.2 cents to 77 cents, as stated by the Institute for Women’s Policy. The current pay gap between female and male is 82 cent for every one dollar. This growth is significant because it opposes the relative stability of the earlier incomes of a woman in the

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 wage gap is when comparing two equally educated and trained females and males, the female earns significantly less for no apparent reason. In the 60’s when feminism started to become a more mainstream idea, laws were made trying to stop discrimination in pay wages that an employer gives, but the wage gap is continually growing especially for women of color. Furthermore, "On average, California women employed full time, year round. are paid just 84 cents for every dollar paid to men - a yearly pay gap of $8,053. That means, in total, women in California lose more than $39 billion every year..." (“California”). This example of the wage gap shows how full-time working women in California only make 84% of what men make. Overall, all women in California impacted by the wage gap make up $39 billion every year. The wage gap impacts women in California very

The wage gap cannot be solved using education levels. The article“Breaking Down The Gender Wage Gap” explains, “Historically, women had lower levels of college education than men, which could have contributed to the overall wage gap. However, in recent decades women have outpaced men in educational attainment: between 1975 and 2015, the share of women in the labor force age 25+ with a college degree increased from 14% to 41%” (1). Higher education is a great tool to increase earnings. However, as explained by “Breaking Down The Gender Wage Gap” women have got higher educations but are not earning the same as men with the same or lower education levels. Furthermore, the education level of women does not always lead to equal pay, it is also still affected by the wage

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

There has been plenty of research done on this topic to help prove that the information on the wage gap is true. For a while now, a woman’s dollar does not equal a man’s dollar. One man’s dollar equals only seventy-eight cents for a woman’s dollar. Sadly, this issue has been happening for a long time, though there had not been any

The wage gap has been around for quite some time now. For many years, women working was rare, since they had to stay home to clean the house or take care of the children. But today, you wouldn’t think it was like that, considering that the women’s labor-force participation rate is hovering around 57 percent.but just because they’re participating more, doesn’t mean they’re getting paid fairly. The sad thing is though, is that the pay gap isn’t just based on gender, but age, and ethnicity play a large role too. I get maybe one person having more experience, or education, but gender, age and ethnicity should not have an impact of how much someone gets paid as opposed to one of their coworkers. Many people say there is no wage gap, or that

The politically correct definition of the wage gap is “a statistical indicator often used as an index of the status of women’s earnings relative to men’s. It is also used to compare the earnings of other races and ethnicities to those of white males” (“The Wage Gap”). Some given statistics—per Jane Farrell and Sarah Jane Glynn of the Center for American Progress—that attribute to the wage gap were: 2.4 % race/ethnicity, 3.5 % union status, 10.5 % labor force experience, 21.9 % industry, and 27.4 % occupation. While a -6.7 % in educational attainment helped to ease the gender wage difference. These figures account for 59% of the reason for a wage gap, but 41% is still unaccounted for. Howard J. Wall can be quoted in The Regional Economist’s article “The Gender Wage Gap and Wage Discrimination: Illusion or Reality?”, which was published on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, claiming that “the unexplained portion of the gender wage gap could be due to wage discrimination.” This discrimination,

Many people will argue against me that the wage gap no longer exists because of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, but it is far from true. Women everywhere are still suffering because of sex discrimination in the work force and it is even worse for women of color. Award winning journalist and author Sophia A. Nelson said, “In 2016, women on average were paid 80 cents for every dollar men earned. If you break the pay gap down by race and ethnicity, it’s even worse: black women were paid 63 cents; Latinas, 54 cents for every dollar white men made.” But the wage gap isn’t the only problem women are still facing.

Research has identified several factors that contribute to the difference between wages paid to women and wages paid to men, commonly called the gender wage gap. Many say that these differences in the choices and behavior of women and men in balancing their work, personal, and family lives. These factors include, the occupations and industries in which they work, and their human capital development, work experience, career interruptions, and motherhood. Other factors are sources of wage adjustments that compensate specific groups of workers for benefits or duties that disproportionately impact them. These factors include health insurance, other fringe benefits, and overtime at work (Webster, 2013). The gender wage gap, the observed difference between wages paid to women and wages paid to men, has been a source of both political controversy and economic research throughout the past several decades. The gap is commonly measured as the ratio of the median earnings of women and the median earnings of men, which indicates the proportion of the median male earnings that the median female earnings represent (Webster, 2013). When the ratio is calculated for all men and women who are paid wages or salaries or for all wage and salary earners who work full-time and year-round, the measure is often called the raw gender wage gap.