Equal Pay Discrimination

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Throughout the history of the world, discrimination has been a consistent problem in society. Whether the discrimination is race, gender, religion, beliefs, appearance or anything else, it happens everyday. A significant discrimination problem is the wage gap and it takes place in the workplace. This type of inequality has been around for centuries. Women still earn considerably less than men because of unqualified, inaccurate reasons such as women making up a small portion of the workforce, and women being less educated. The wage gap is a statistical indicator often used as an index of the status of women’s earning relative to men’s. It is also used to compare the earnings of other races and ethnicities to those of white males, a group generally …show more content…

The Equal Pay Act requires that men and women be given equal pay for equal work in the same establishment. The jobs do not have to be exactly alike, but they must be substantially equal. It is job content or not job titles that determines whether jobs are substantially equal. Specifically, the Equal Pay Act provides that employers may not pay unequal wages to men and women who perform jobs that require substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility, and that are performed under similar working conditions within the same establishment. According to the Society for Human Resource Management’s website, “The Equal Pay Act requires that men and women be given equal pay for equal work in the same establishment.” Not long after the Equal Pay Act was passed, the United States government created the U.S. Equal Employment Agency. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age, disability or genetic information. It is also illegal to discriminate against a person because the person complained about discrimination, filed a charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination investigation or lawsuit. The EEOC was made to enforce “...federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an

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