The “Gender Wage Gap”
According to the Census taken, when examining the issue of the gender wage gap it showed that for every dollar a man earned every woman earned between 77 and 79 cent. While these numbers are only slightly uneven, they do a terrible job in showing the actual Gender Wage Gap. These numbers just show every U.S. working citizen as well as how much they get paid but it does not compare men and women that work the same job within work place. In other words this number does not compare a man who works as a doctor with a woman who works as a doctor, instead it represents the general population.
This Gender Wage Gap has yet to be properly addressed or dealt with…in 2014, President Barak Obama aimed to address the Gender Wage Gap with the Paycheck Fairness Act.
For employees, the Paycheck Fairness Act would:
- Protect against retaliation for discussing salaries with colleagues
- Prohibit employers from screening job applicants based on their salary history or requiring
salary history during the interview and hiring process
- Require employers to prove that pay disparities exist for legitimate, job-related reasons
- Provide plaintiffs who file sex-based wage discrimination claims under the Equal Pay Act with the same remedies as are available to plaintiffs who file race- or ethnicity-based wage discrimination claims under the Civil Rights Act
- Remove obstacles in the Equal Pay Act to facilitate plaintiffs’ participation in class actionlawsuits that challenge systemic pay discrimination
- Create a negotiation skills training program for women and girls
For employers, the Paycheck Fairness Act would:
- Recognize excellence in pay practices
- Provide assistance to businesses of all sizes that need help with their equal pay practices
For enforcement agencies, the Paycheck Fairness Act would:
- Help ensure the Department of Labor uses the full range of investigatory tools to uncover wage discrimination, including collecting federal contractors’ wage data
- Direct the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to conduct a survey of available wage information to assist federal agencies in enforcing wage discrimination laws and creating a system to collect wage data
- Instruct Department of Labor to conduct studies and review available research and data to provide information on how to identify, correct and eliminate illegal wage disparities
Although this was a step in the right direction, showing that there was awareness on a Congressional level, it still lacked to address the underlying issues of men and women working in the same job and getting a different salary because once again it focused on this idea that woman get paid 77 cent to the dollar.
There are many factors that go into this Gender Wage Gap such as job choice. We often look at STEM jobs such as Engineering, Doctor, IT work such as computer science as male jobs. These jobs are some of the most high paying jobs and since they are mainly male dominated that means that men are the ones bringing in these higher incomes. Where as jobs in the fields of Human Resources and early childhood education are mainly jobs taken on by woman. These jobs are seen as lower paying job that don’t generate as much money. According to the United States Department of Labor the three most common occupations for woman in 2015 were: elementary or middle school teacher, registered nurse, secretaries and administrative assistance. The three most common jobs for a man were: sales workers and truck drivers, managers, and first-line supervisors of retail sales workers. These show men working in positions with power and females working in positions with less power.
While it appears that woman are choosing to pursue less competitive jobs and jobs that pay less we have to evaluate why they chose these jobs. Just think if you knew… that if you are a woman and you worked just as hard as a man maybe even ten times harder to get that job as a doctor and you are getting paid less than someone else…would you even go through all the hard work of getting this dream job? If we do pursue these jobs as a woman we chose to settle, woman deserve equality. More and more women are speaking up demanding equal rights, oppression takes place in many different shapes and forms and this happens to be a way that we deal with modern day oppression.
With the many movements that took place towards fighting for equal pay, we have developed the Equal Pay Day in support of the Equal Rights Movement, equal pay day is April 2, 2019. The date is significant because it represents how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. This day was established in 1996 and it can change depending on when we see changes in the gender wage gap.
I haven’t allowed this gender wage gap to effect my goals of becoming a doctor because I believe the United States does a well job in promoting equality, so I hope that this oppression will be exposed and they will change the pay system.
Hi Jalyn,
For your Civic blog, what struck me first was your title, “Let’s Put Inequalities and Modern Day Oppression To Rest.” I think by making a call to action as a title, you are both introducing the topic you will be discussing as well as adding your sense of urgency and level of interest about this topic to your blog. In your post, “The ‘Gender Wage Gap’”, the beginning criticism of the Census fact was extremely powerful. I had known of the original fact stated, but your opinion on how this misrepresents the true gender wage gap really opened my eyes to something I had not recently thought of. The listing of the effects of the Paychecks Fairness Act for employees, employers, and enforcement helped to break up your post as well as guide your reader into fully understand the effects this act would have. Your images were very powerful and well-placed and I think this also helped to create a well-written and well laid out post.