This blog will be about the difficulties and obstacles that women face in the workplace. The main issues talked about will be the gender pay gap, double standards, maternity leave, and childcare.
According to Time, it will take about 135+ years for men and women to be on the same pay level. One of the most talked about areas of this issue is the entertainment industry. While the entertainment industry may not be the one we are aiming to land in for the future, for the sake of this blog, I am going to mainly stick with the entertainment industry example to illustrate my points.
According to Insider.com, “2018’s highest-paid actress, Scarlett Johansson, made $198.5 million less than the highest-paid actor, George Clooney.” Similarly, in TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Ellen Pompeo, who plays the main character Meredith Grey, was paid half of what her costar, Patrick Dempsey, who plays her love interest made. A supporting statistic, according to theconversation.com, “…top female actors earn 38% as much as the top male actors.” So this is not an unfamiliar conversation that needs to be had.
There are women who are trying to speak up for themselves and others. One woman who has been speaking up against this is Jessica Chastain, who has become more vocal on the issue. According to Vanity Fair, she asks a film’s producer how her salary for a project compares to her male costars, and she has even helped fellow actress Octavia Spencer earn the same wages as her in a movie they costarred in. However, Chastain is one of the exceptions. Women have to be careful in every profession; they need to have the status and voice that if they get shut down or reprimanded, their career will not suffer for it. Actresses who do not have the status or voice to advocate for themselves may just take the disparity in pay silently.
Even looking at singers, female singers have to work so much harder to be near the same level as male singers. Taylor Swift is the only woman according to Rolling Stone to be on the Top 10 of the Highest Paid Musicians of 2021 list. Not to mention, during their shows women have to have multiple outfit changes and keep reinventing themselves, new hair, new makeup, while men can wear one outfit and keep doing their thing. The double standards are real. Female celebrities often pick up many projects as well, and they are still not paid nearly as much. Two celebrities I admire are Selena Gomez and Kelly Clarkson. Selena Gomez can act and sing, has her own TV show, and is the founder of Rare Beauty; Kelly Clarkson sings, is a Voice coach and Wayfair ambassador, has her own talk show, and is a mother on top of it all. And yet their net worths are $75 million and $45 million, respectively, much lower than many males’.
Another area that all women who want to have children must be concerned about is what happens when they decide they want to start a family? According to Welovesalt.com. “…42% of women did not feel that advancement processes gave them adequate support to progress in their careers…only 29% of women in Britain reported that they felt they could have children without it affecting their career.” Pregnancy takes major tolls on one’s body, but women usually work right up until they give birth. For actresses, you might need to have a certain body for a role, and therefore a lot of actresses push off starting families until their careers are more established. In general, putting career first is an up and coming trend in the workforce today, across all professions. In a normal workplace, employers may choose to hire a young man over a young woman, assuming that young women will soon get married and start a family. It hurts young women’s chances, and it pushes against having more gender diversity in the workplace, specifically between young men and women. As a result, more women are working until they know they have a stable position they are satisfied with to come back to.
There are also the questions every woman is asked: When are you getting married? When are you having kids? When society makes it so stinking hard to start a family, you wonder why women take “so long”.
Another factor is what happens after you have the baby. According to the Washington Post, the United States has 0 weeks of paid parental leave, which compared to 39 weeks in Britain, 52+ weeks in Japan, 68 weeks in Sweden, and 82+ weeks in Estonia, is astounding. This is also assuming that the mother has had a healthy pregnancy; according to Blue Cross Blue Shield, “Between 2014-2018, the rates of pregnancy complications rose more than 16%, while rates for childbirth complications rose more than 14%.” If a woman needs time to heal, she has to sacrifice pay for health. Another subissue is regarding adoptive parents; not all maternity policies apply to women who do not directly give birth to their baby, and as an adoptee, I find that outrageous. Every mother deserves to have time to bond with her baby, regardless of whether she gave birth or not. Between being unpaid and the lack of time, this is a major issue. Not to mention the price of childcare! According to Americanprogress.org, “At just over $1,300 per month, families with infants would need to pay nearly $16,000 per year on average to cover the true cost of childcare.” Sacrificing money and time is a tough decision for a family to make.
One last consideration is a Dad’s role in all of this. It is not often thought of if a young man chooses to take paternity leave instead, but sometimes those opportunities work better for some families. According to CBSNews, “Only 5% of new dads take at least two weeks of parental leave.” However, for couples of the same sex, or where the father takes care of the baby instead, there can be cultural assumptions that hurt them emotionally. It may not be considered the “man’s” role, so this can be damaging to young fathers as well.
Personally, I want to become a lawyer. In regard to the aforementioned issues, according to Abajournal.com, 37.7% of U.S. law firms are proportionally women, and 20% of first-year law students are women of color. In this career field, I would already be in a minority demographic, and as such, may face most of these issues. According to lawyeredu.org, men earn 53% more than women, female leadership in the field is minimal, and women trying to take maternity leave often face discrimination (not just in law). Woo!
If there was more diversity in the workplace, with more female leadership, I would like to believe there would be more policies put in place to support a woman’s decision to start a family. With most of the workplace’s leaders being men, the workplace can be stubborn and unforgiving to women. America makes it so hard for women to start families between being hired, being paid, being faced with double standards, taking maternity leave, and childcare. America needs to have better initiatives put in place to support women on their journey to starting a family, regardless of what profession they choose.
today/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20challenges%20faced,to%20progress%20in%20their%20careers.
https://time.com/5951101/global-gender-gap-135-years/
https://www.insider.com/hollywood-gender-pay-gap-examples-actresses-paid-less-than-actors-2019-4#2018s-highest-paid-actress-scarlett-johansson-made-1985-million-less-than-the-highest-paid-actor-george-clooney-1
https://theconversation.com/exploring-the-data-on-hollywoods-gender-pay-gap-127414#:~:text=In%20the%20film%20industry%2C%20the,as%20the%20top%20male%20actors.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/06/jessica-chastain-octavia-spencer-wage-gap-woman-walks-ahead
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/highest-paid-musicians-2021-bruce-springsteen-jay-z-taylor-swift-1281654/blake-shelton-83-million-1282541/
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/singers/selena-gomez-net-worth/
https://www.welovesalt.com/news/2020/03/what-are-the-biggest-challenges-women-face-in-the-workplace-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/11/global-paid-parental-leave-us/
https://www.bcbs.com/the-health-of-america/reports/trends-in-pregnancy-and-childbirth-complications-in-the-us#complications
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/true-cost-high-quality-child-care-across-united-states/#:~:text=At%20just%20over%20%241%2C300%20per,true%20cost%20of%20child%20care.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paternity-leave-pete-buttigieg-criticism-policy-united-states/#:~:text=It’s%20still%20far%20from%20the,his%20first%20child%20was%20born.
https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/female-lawyers-still-underrepresented-especially-in-partnership-ranks-which-law-firms-do-best#:~:text=Over%20the%20last%20six%20years,female%20lawyers%20are%20also%20underrepresented.
https://www.lawyeredu.org/women-in-law.html
