preview

The Issue Of Equal Pay For Equal Work

Decent Essays

The issue of equal pay for equal work performed by women; is a political hot button in the 2016 presidential campaign. So much so that the stump speeches, for both former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and senator, Bernie Sanders, always include this issue. Since the 1960s, congress and many researchers have tested this theory. In order to affirm the validity of this message, we will perform a five-step hypothesis test. In the book, “Statistical Techniques in Business & Economics,” authors D. Lind, W. Marchal & S. Wathen (2012), describe how to conduct this test of hypothesis. We seek to determine if two sampled populations, females and males, have the same mean (arithmetic average) wages. The process begins with only the raw data from a 2005 wages database. As a result, the authors further explain: “The method described does not require that we know the standard deviations of the populations (2012).” For that reason, we assume the sampled populations are equal, but, the standard deviations are unknown. Then, we use the t-test as the test statistic, with 30 degrees of freedom.
Problem Statement In an online article entitled “The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap”, published on the AAUW website, author Catherine Hill, PhD, had this to say: “Did you know that in 2014, women working full time in the United States typically were paid just 79 percent of what men were paid, a gap of 21 percent? The gap has narrowed since the 1970s, due largely to women’s

Get Access