The wage gap between men and women has been contested and fought about for an innumerable number of years now. Some claim the wage gap is imaginary, while others argue that it’s much worse than commonly estimated. However, what is the truth? How accurate are people when they speak of this gap? As statistics and studies have shown, those “ “feminist complainers” are painfully true.
According to the US Census Bureau, women are paid 80 cents for every dollar men are paid. As the amount of income earned increases, the wage gap only gets wider. In the 10th percentile income range, women are paid 92 cents for every dollar men are paid. However in the 95th percentile income bracket, women are paid 74 cents relative to the dollar that men receive. One main reason for the difference between the two income brackets is due to the wage floor that exists, which prevents wages going below a certain price for all employees. It has also been found that the wage gap varies greatly based on ethnicity. Asian and white women tend to have less varied wages than white men compared to Black and Latina women. Since 1980, Asian and White women have been able to close the gap between their salaries and the salaries of white men by approximately 22 cents. However, Black have only been able to close that gap by 9 cents, and Latina women are at the largest gap with only being able to close the gap by 5 cents. However, in considering differences in the wage gap between minority women it is important to consider the average wages of the different groups. Asian and White Women have salaries that are much closer to the salaries of the average white women. However, Latina and Black women not as much. That said though, even factoring in the different wage values among minority groups, latina and black women are still effected more by the wage gap.
So why does this gap exist, and what is the country doing to try and fix this gap? These aren’t easy or simple questions to answer, but I believe the causes of the wage discrepancies must be analyzed and talked about if this nation will ever come close to ending the discrimination.
A common response when the wage gap dilemma is presented is to greatly oversimplify the situation by placing the cause of the gap solely on the women themselves. Many say women are the cause of the gap due to their tendency to willingly work fewer hours than men, take up lower paying jobs, and stop working for longer periods of time than men. While this is true to an extent, there is more to the gap than simply the differences in hours that men and women work. According to the Center for American Progress, only about 27 percent of the gap can be explained by the difference in hours that the two genders work. Variability in work experience also plays a role in wages, as some women can fall behind in career development more than men due to maternity leave or child care. Another well proven cause is that companies, such as mining and construction businesses, hugely favor hiring men over women. These stated causes are the proven sources of the wage disparity, but approximately 40 percent of the wage gap is caused by unexplained forces. Meaning, 40 percent of the gap is due to blatant or subconscious sexism towards women and how aggressive and willing companies and women are about pay negotiations. As a woman and someone who intends to enter the workforce, this ever-present 40 percent concerns me. I strongly feel this is an issue that needs to be focused on, and while efforts are being made, I am not sure whether this country is being aggressive enough in its tactics.
The first step at closing the wage gap was taken in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy when he signed the Equal Pay Act. This act made it illegal for companies to pay an employee differently based on gender. Unfortunately, this only helped close the gap a little. Then, when President Obama was sworn into office, he placed closing the gap as a top priority. In a press conference he once stated, “The notion that we would somehow be keeping my daughters …any of your daughters out of opportunity, not allowing them to participate in every human endeavor, that’s counterproductive”. In 2009, Obama signed what is known as the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This act was in response to Supreme Court’s ruling in the Ledbetter vs. Goodyear tire company case, which was filed by a woman who used to work at Goodyear Tire Company and discovered that she was being paid less than her male coworkers for numerous years (for more information about Lilly Ledbetter click here). The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that an individual cannot file for pay discrimination if the discrimination occurred more than 180 days ago. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act ensured that a person could file for pay discrimination at any time under the federal anti-discrimination laws. This act helped in allowing workers to have time to build up a case against their employer and prevented companies from concealing the discrimination.
Unfortunately, in the long run, this act seemed to do little in closing the wage gap. The difference in pay between men and women only decreased marginally. Therefore,in 2016, President Obama passed legislation that required companies with over 100 companies to report salary information based on their employees’ gender, race, and ethnicity. This act attempts to make large companies more accountable for their pay distribution. The effects from this legislation have not been properly collected yet, but I hope that it will help in beginning to close the gap.
To me, the gender pay gap seems like something that should have been fixed a long time ago. To have woman paid 80 cents for every dollar a man earns in 2017 is disappointing and discouraging. I believe though that if legislation continues to be passed that aims at protecting gender discrimination and a concerted effort is made by companies to view employees by their ability rather than gender, perhaps the gap really will begin to close. As Sheryl Sandberg, a gender equal rights activist and Facebook CEO once said, “It’s indisputable that there’s a real pay gap. People can argue about how big, but that’s beside the point. The point is that every woman, every girl, deserves to get paid what they’re worth”.
Works Cited:
Center for American Progress
Wow, this post was really informative! I knew that there was a wage gap between men and women as well but I didn’t realize that 40% of it was due to unexplained reasons and that’s a very eye opening fact. I can’t believe that it’s 2017 and there’s still unjustifiable reasons for the pay gap. Hopefully the legislation that Barack Obama passed will end up having a positive effect on the gap because it really needs to change and the current administration most likely won’t consider it a top priority, or a priority at all, like he did.
While I understand and respect where you are coming from, many economists have debunked the wage gap. “The official Bureau of Labor Department statistics show that the median earnings of full-time female workers is 77 percent of the median earnings of full-time male workers. But that is very different than ’77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.'” My economy professor last semester, Dr. Brown, spent a class period talking about how the statistics you mentioned, leave out a lot of information that when factored in for, make the wage gap only .98 for every dollar a man makes. Things like, years of experience, education, and men asking for raises more regularly.
I completely support women who are doing the exact same job as a man and getting paid less, to get what they deserve, but overall the wage gap is not as severe as it might seem!
This is the website, I quoted from in my post. http://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy-into-the-gender-pay-gap-myth/#2fd511e14766
Thank you for your comment. I may not completely agree with you about the current wage gap, but I do agree that the way in which they collect the statistics may be faulty. When I was looking for the wage gap, I actually found a lot of varied numbers (meaning liberal sites had a very high gap and right wing sites said there was no gap). It’s difficult to measure that wage gap, and I am sure there are a lot of confounding variables in the number. However, I do believe that it is an issue that needs to be discussed and respected. Even if the wage gap isn’t as big as I said, any gap because of gender is unacceptable, in my opinion.
As a woman of color, I can agree that the gender wage gap is disheartening. I wish that there was a better solution to this issue. If 40% of the wage gap stems from the natural biases of employers, the gender wage gap seems to be residual damage of the patriarchal nature of our society. For years men were deemed better than woman, so even though we’ve come along way we have so far to go. I hope that this is something that will get even better by the time our daughters or granddaughters enter the workforce.