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What causes gender inequality in the workplace
Gender pay gap sociological perspective
What causes gender inequality in the workplace
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Throughout history gender bias has played a role in the workplace. Many years ago it was believed that women should cook, clean, and do all other house chores while men did what was considered manual labor. When women were granted with the same work opportunities as men they were still being cut short by having such a tremendous wage gap. Female workers are faced with significant challenges in the workforce. The gender pay gap is a major issue that has been known for many years. The wage gap is a statistical indicator used often as a median status of women’s earnings relatives to men’s. History has been proven to repeat itself. Women have been overlooked and unequally paid for decades. In 1963 when John F. Kennedy signed The Equal Pay Act, …show more content…
The PSI’s Pay Equity Campaign sees pay equity as a broad ranging definition which covers action to tackle pay inequalities, the under-valuation of work in female dominated jobs, poverty and low pay. There are social, economic, business and service quality benefits that can result from achieving pay equity in the public services. In particular, evidence shows that women who belong to unions are less likely to suffer wage discrimination and are more likely to earn higher wages than women performing similar or equivalent work and who are not unionized. In particular, it is very important that men in the unions recognize that pay equity is good for all workers and that pay equity can help to overcome the leveling down of wages and enhance the value of work for all. Of crucial importance is the recognition that pay equity cannot be achieved by shifting resources around in the wages budget on the basis that the gains of one group of workers are paid for from those of another group of …show more content…
In any case if a woman has worked the ample amount of time to further her education just like a man then the pay should not matter, their job performance should make their increase in pay not their gender. “Mankind” was viewed as such, a collection of men: dependent upon women for reproduction but unwilling to value them as equal members of society. While the establishment of internationally recognized women’s rights has accelerated, greatly, over the past century, “gender equality” is an idea that remains very far off from reality. The wage gap between men and women is a major issue facing today’s society. “Women are faced with a pay gap in nearly every occupation. From elementary and middle school teachers to computer programmer, women are paid less than men in female-dominated, gender-balanced, and male-dominated occupations.” These statistics are quite unexpected because the college graduation rate of women compared to that of men is 32% percent
Though any pay disparity between women and men is a pressing issue, the “wage gap” is much more complicated than people believe because of misleading statistics, unaccounted for variables, and the different social and economic choices of men and women. The common idea that women make 77 cents on every dollar men make in the workplace is very misleading. It is true, however, this statistic ignores any factors that justify different pay. The wage gap is just the difference
Throughout the world, discrimination in all forms has continued to be a constant struggle; whether it’s racial, gender based, religion, beliefs, appearance or anything that makes one person different from another, it’s an everyday occurrence. A major place that discrimination is occurring at is in the workplace. One of the largest problems discrimination issues is believed to be gender. Women, who have the same amount of experience as men are not getting paid at the same rate as men, these women also are equally trained and educated. According to the article Gender Pay, it was discovered in 2007 that a woman makes 81 cents for every dollar a man earns.(“Gender Pay”) . This shouldn’t be happening in today’s society for the fact the society lived in today is suppose to be more accepting. Men are viewed as being more popular, valuable and having higher powers than women. The Reason Discrimination is involved in the equal pay equal work is because of the significance it has to how some businesses pay their employees.
However, that does not mean that inequalities no longer exist between the two genders, the pay gap between men and women is one of the larger gender inequalities seen today. According to an article “ Explaining the Pay Disparity Between Women and Men in Similar Jobs” the authors state that, “ equal pay ranked higher than health care, family and medical leave, pensions and social security for most important legislative issues” (Hessaramiri,Kleiner 3). People want something done about this injustice and are looking towards the government to intervene. The Equal Pay Act is one of these interventions put in place to make employees under the same profession paychecks’ equal no matter the gender. After forty years though, the Equal Pay Act has done little to stop the pay gap from continuing. Hessaramiri and Kleiner inform us that, “ According to the Monthly Labor Review, the weekly earnings of women were lower than that of men for full time employees across all broad occupational categories” (4). Most of the time these employees suffering from the pay gap do not even realize that they are being
But sex-segregation does not really explain the overall gender wage gap. Women’s average educational attainment now exceeds that of men’s and as a result, women have been entering previously considered to be “masculine” occupational fields at growing rates. Even in the STEM fields, women are no longer underrepresented except for in computer sciences and engineering. However, gender wage gap is present at every level of the career ladder in every field. How and why does this
Pay equity programs attempt to address the undervaluation for work traditionally or historically done by women. Pay equity (also referred to as “comparable worth”) programs require a gender-neutral analysis of comparative work. A variety of very different jobs are compared based on a composite of the skill, effort and responsibility of a job and the conditions under which the job is generally done. The comparison determines the relative worth of those jobs to the achievement of a firm’s objectives, under the proposition that equal contribution merits equal compensation. Where female-dominated jobs in the workplace are found to be of equal or comparable value to male-dominated jobs but paid below the level of the male jobs or payline, then all employees in those female-dominated jobs are entitled to receive pay equity adjustments.
Lilly Ledbetter once said, “We sought justice because equal pay for equal work is an American value. That fight took me ten years. it took me all the way to the Supreme Court. And, in a 5-4 decision, they stood on the side of those who shortchanged my pay, my overtime, and my retirement just because I am a woman.” The gender pay gap is a problem that many women, like Lilly Ledbetter, face everyday because it has many different causes, and it has a large impact on the economy in the United States.
In addition, women are paid less than men for the same type of work. According to Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg mentions that women were paid fifty-nine cents for every dollar men were paid in 1996, but women protested to raise the compensation to seventy-seven cents (6). This means that even though a woman and a man perform the same work such as an engineer does, both do the same assignments and have the same responsibilities in the technology place, men are paid twenty three cents more than women. Moreover, women suffer from “gender discount” which means women have to pay for being part of the workplace or society ...
No matter what kind of education a woman has in the United States, males’ salaries are always higher. Even though both parties have the same qualifications, males are paid more because that is how America society is. Throughout history, many individuals believe that because of influential, intellectual and sophisticated men are responsible for how America is today. This bigoted mindset deludes that women also played an essential role in making America the way it is currently. Despite the accomplishments and success women can have, there is an economic gap between salaries.
It is very important to be concerned about the issue because it is constantly increasing throughout the United States. It upsets me that women are paid less than men because women have the same ability and work ethic as men do, but they are looked at differently. According to AAUW, women make 77 percent of what men make. This rate hasn’t changed since 2002 (Hill, 2013). Statistics show that women will never make as much as men due to the thought of never being comparable to men (Williams, 2013).
In most of the world, women seem to be the victims suffering from heavy inequality, from not permitted to drive in countries like Saudi Arabia, to occupational segregation in countries like the United States. So why is it even after the women’s movement in 1920s, and many equal rights laws in placed in the constitution of The United States, women are still facing such disputes across the nation? The answer is simple, from many years and still today the female gender is perceived to be less powerful than a male. For starters, the first video we watched in class about gender pay gap issue, brings up the number one issue in the United States women face. This is especially true in the business part of the world, most of the higher rank positions
The first ever Equal Pay Act started in 1963, when women started to get more education. This act in 1963, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see Gender pay gap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963, by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program. There where different kinds of acts for women's rights, such as The 1980 Act on Equality between Men and Women/Equal Opportunities Act. The Equal Pay Act in 1970, as amended by Equal Value Regulations of 1983, and the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 and 1986, superseded by the Equality Act in 2010. Even though the equal pay act in 1963 started and was signed into law by John F. Kennedy, there is still no equal
In today’s society, Women perform similar jobs to men. Whether it’s blue or white collar jobs, women are always present and thriving for success balancing a life of business and family. In the job market, some are graduates of the best schools and have interned at the best firms, but are still not compensated as equally as men. Following the recent comments by the CEO of Microsoft concerning women asking for raises and how they should trust the system to install equality, the issue seems to be still present, and women’s work is not rewarded similarly to men’s.
Gender Inequality at a Workplace Historically, males and females normally assume different kinds of jobs with varying wages in the workplace. These apparent disparities are widely recognized and experienced across the globe, and the most general justification for these differences is that they are the direct outcomes of discrimination or traditional gender beliefs—that women are the caregivers and men are the earners. However, at the turn of the new century, women have revolutionized their roles in the labor market. Specifically in industrialized societies, the social and economic position of women has shifted. Despite the improving participation of women in the labor force and their ameliorating proficiency and qualifications, the labor force is still not so favorable to women.
Gender inequality is defined as “the disparity in status, power, and prestige between people who identify as women and men” (Trust Women PAC). The argument presented by people who believe that there is gender inequality in the workplace is that when young women enter the workforce, it is hard to find balance between family and their work. Even though women have surpassed men in terms of educational achievement, the gender wage gap has barely been reduced. Gender inequality is deeply rooted in gender stereotypes and stereotypes are already extremely hard to break, especially because everybody will engage in some type of stereotyping. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report of 2010, the United States was ranked nineteenth in terms of gender equality, behind countries such as Sweden and Iceland. Although great strides have been made to close the gender gap, more needs to be done. How does gender discrimination in the work place affect women in regards to hiring/promotions, wage disparity, and occupation choice?
America is a place that encourages freedom and equal opportunity. Unfortunately women are not always receiving that equality in their paychecks. The problem is in some instances, women still are not being paid equal to men in the workplace. In fact, they are still being paid seventy five cents to the man’s dollar. It is unfathomable to think that the wage gap continues to exist in 2015. Women have undoubtedly become a significant part of the American workforce. However, women’s pay has not kept pace with their male counterparts due to several reasons.