Gender Wage Gap: Unveiling Discrimination in America

America prides itself in being one of the most progressive and fairest countries in the word. It is often claimed that everyone here will be treated equally and given the same opportunities. We also believe that discrimination against any class of people is something of the past and will not be tolerated today. So why it is that women in the workforce are discriminated against and still treated unequally? According to the National Women’s Law Center, “American women who work full time, year round are paid only 80 cents for every dollar paid to men — and for women of color, the wage gap is even larger.” This means that a woman, who is equally qualified, with an equivalent education and will be doing the same type of work, can still and will

Many people have argued that this type of discriminatory behavior is not unfair at all because a man naturally should be paid more because of his traditional role as the head of the family and primary wage earner for his wife and children. This may have been the truth in the past but that was only because women were simply not allowed in most job occupations and education was limited to white privileged men. However the reality is that “Today 1 in 4 children under the age of 18 — a total of about 17.4 million — are being raised without a father and nearly half (45%) live below the poverty line” (U.S. census bureau-table-C8). As you can see a man always being the primary breadwinner for his family is simply untrue. Also many women choose not to get married, are widowed, divorced, or are married or committed to another woman! So the rational that it is a man’s right to earn more than a woman, is not only ludicrous but nonsensical as

Women are the primary ones who take care of America’s children. They are the ones who carry the children for 9 months and then do all the heavy-lifting for the next 18 years. Now this is not to take away from committed fathers but the fact is that childrearing, cooking, cleaning, and shopping are more often than not responsibility’s that fall on the women. This is true for married women as well. Now you would think that women taking time off to have a baby would not be held against them and yet this is exactly what employer’s state as being the reason for paying woman less in the first place. In the article The Many Benefits of Paid Family and Medical Leave by the Center for American Progress, it talks about how getting pregnant is seen almost as a liability to employers when it comes to hiring women and therefore they compensate by reducing their pay. In fact about 10% of the gender gap in pay is directly a result of this (Boushey et al.,