The Gender Wage Gap Essay

Simply having a associates degree can substantially increase your salary. The graph provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community

The gender wage gap in America is a social problem that has existed since women entered the workforce. According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, for every dollar earned by a man, a woman made 78.3 cents in 2013 (Leon-Guerrero, 2016). Data from 1983 to 1998 and concluded that women workers in their prime earning years make 38% of what men make. During the 15-year period, an average prime-age working woman earned only $273,592 compared with $722,693 earned by the average working man in 1999 (Leon-Guerrero, 2016). The wage gap affects women of color in a more profound way that it does non-hispanic white women. Hispanic women are making 53%, African American women are making 64%, and Asian American women are making 87% of white men’s earnings each year (AAUW, 2013).

As long as an American woman is putting in the same amount of hours with the same qualifications and experience in the same occupation as an American male, and yet taking home a wage that is any lower, she is not being treated fairly as an equal. Contrary to many arguments, it’s undeniable that a wage gap exists, and while there are various ideas as to the most probable cause, there is no reason why this gap should continue to go uncorrected or unchanged. Our government should take concrete steps to close the gender wage gap because it violates women’s rights and equality.

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 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.

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.

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).

According to Johansson et al (2005) “differences in the educational requirements for jobs have contributed considerably to gender earnings inequality.” Kara (2006) demonstrated that women get remunerated less with no formal schooling, however, the wage gap decreases among genders with higher education. Gregorio and Lee (2002) also found that higher educational attainment led to more equal income between men and women. Kara (2006) found that women with high school and college degrees are more likely to work than women with lower levels of education. A study done by Löfström (1989) found that returns for women to education and to work experience are far lower than men. According to Johansson et al (2005), in a decomposition analysis he found that the measured differences in jobs and qualifications between women and men can account only for between two-fifths and three-fifths of the gender wage

The reasons behind the wage gap between men and women is quite similar. Despite the fact today when women make up sixty percent of university students and are the majority holders of master and doctorates degrees, most women still earn about thirty percent less than men. With all these advanced degrees, women make up a minority in management position and top-ranking roles in government. A cause for this remaining gap, is the sexist stigma that women are the care givers in society. The expectation that women will be mothers someday leads them to get “hired into mummy tracks positions that lead nowhere” (CITE). In addition, women are still expected by a lot of men to be caring and docile, while men have to be strong and aggressive. So women tend

Flores also points out that “men’s earnings at the six-year mark are approximately $4,000 higher per year than women’s at 10 years.” Mark Perry of AEIdeas says, “for the eighth year in a row, women earned a majority of doctoral degrees awarded at US universities in 2016.” Women earning a Master’s degree outnumbered the men in 7 out of 11 “fields of graduate study and in some of those fields the gender disparity was huge” (Perry). Further, women are choosing fields of study that were previously dominated by men. Payscale reports that when women begin to move careers into previously male dominated fields, the average pay drops. Again, confirming that women’s work is

Women today have progressed to unprecedented levels, however, in all the ways women have advanced, “There has been remarkably little change in the gender balance of some of the most common occupations for either women or men during the last forty years “(p. 5). There was a large decline in the 80’s in workplace segregation, but since then, gender integration in the workplace has been relatively stagnant. This is largely related to the gender stigmas attached to fields such as teachers or health care workers that are largely dominated by women. There is an undeniable wage penalty for working in predominately female occupations that also deters men from these fields. The Department of Labor suggests many possible policies to be made in order to tackle this issue if the goal of equal opportunity for women wishes to be

It is a common conception that women in the work place to begin with have a disadvantage but even more so if the woman is in fact a mother or the primary caregiver in the family. Written in Motherhood as a Status Characteristic says that “The pay gap between mothers and non-mothers under age thirty-five is now larger than the wage gap between young men and women” Nearly everyday there is one that asks why there is a wage gap between men and women but you rarely hear someone ask about the wage gap between mothers in the workforce and non-mothers in the work force. Ridgeway and Correll analyze some of the reasons as to why there could be a gap in how and why women of motherhood and women on non-motherhood get treated differently in society.

“Among occupations, those in healthcare are projected to add 2.3 million jobs, about 1 in 4 new jobs. Occupations in food preparation and serving, personal care services, and sales are projected to add another 2.4 million jobs. Together, these 4.7 million new jobs represent approximately one‐half of all employment gains over the coming decade” (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).

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