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The gender pay gap persuassive essay
Gender wage gap and inequality
The gender pay gap persuassive essay
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To what extent does the gendered labour market impact women’s employment in Britain?
The main aim of my research proposal is to investigate women’s experiences of the labour market in comparison to men. This will be done by:
• Exploring how gender affects the career choices of both men and women
• To understand why more women are in part-time work than men
• To explore the gender pay gap
To complete my dissertation and meet the above objectives I will need to use an array of sources. These sources may be in the form of books, academic journals, government publications and relevant news articles. To find the relevant literature I will extract sources from The Lanchester Library and the library’s online database; Locate.
Firstly, I will analyse secondary research. To provide a framework for my literature review I will need to gather and understand the relevant literature that already exists on my chosen topic. With the data I find I will compare this with other research studies and discuss the similarities or differences which may be present, identify key themes within the literature, discuss studies which either support or dispute a particular finding and discuss the relevance and implications of the research.
Secondly, to add to my understanding I will carry out some fieldwork. To do this I will use the quantitative research method of postal questionnaires. I have chosen to produce a postal questionnaire rather than constructing interviews in order to save expenses. Due to questionnaires being relatively cheap to produce and distribute, they are beneficial to a researcher who wishes to use a geographically wide sample. In regards to my research proposal, to garner a clearer picture of women’s experiences of the labour market in ...
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...ional segregation as research shows that ‘a third of female corporate managers move to a lower skill occupation after having a child with two-thirds of these moving into clerical work’ (UCEA, 2011: 24).
Another factor which could influence the gender pay gap is whether women work in the public or private sector. The Fawcett Society (2013) assert that the greater levels of wages of which the public sector offer women plays a contributing role to the overall pay gap between men and women. They demonstrate this through statistics which show that the mean gender pay gap for all work in the public sector comes to a figure of 17.6% in comparison to the 24.2% gap in the private sector. Olsen and Walby (2004) argue that this difference in pay between the public and private sector could be associated with the enhanced likelihood of union membership within the public domain.
Occupational segregation by gender is at the heart of stereotyped career choices and has shown a stubborn resistance to change in the labour market of the United Kingdom, despite women entering the labor market more highly qualified Clouds Work (2009).
In response to the question set, I will go into detail of the study, consisting of the background, main hypotheses, as well the aims, procedure and results gathered from the study; explaining the four research methods chosen to investigate, furthering into the three methods actually tested.
Gender relations in the work force are of one of the fastest changing areas of social relations. Prior to the industrial revolution, there was little separation between work and home or public and private life. Though this changed during the industrial revolution. Women and men both started to have a significant role in society. Men, Women, and even children worked in factories and mills. People worked in horrible and dangerous working c...
Analysis on gender discrimination reveals that gender plays a discouraging factor in the employment of women. Throughout history men and women have been segregated into two separate sectors of employment "male" and "female." Historically, humans have witnessed various acts of fallacious imperialism that is often imposed upon groups of people based on ethnicity, skin completion and, gender. One without any socially constructed knowledge of gender would pose the question can someone really be denied employment based on gender? The answer when taking in consideration the social and empirical notions that are prevalent in society the answer would unfortunately yes, they can and have been denied historically based on gender. Various acts and interventions in efforts of alleviating the dilemma concerning employment inequalities have included a better labor market and suggestions of educational opportunities were also believed to provide a remedy to the entire crisis.
Discrimination based on gender or sex is a common civil rights violation. Discrimination continues to exist in all forms, despite the efforts to eliminate it. Skin color, religion, and sex are the central components of discrimination in the world. One specific area that has shown great improvements over time is gender equality. Throughout world history, women have been viewed as inferior to men. In the United States, women were not allowed to join the military or vote. The United States has made great strides in providing equal opportunity to all genders. In spite of the several laws and acts congress has passed, women are still viewed as subordinate people. Judith Lorber, Shari Dworkin, Bianca Grohmann, as well as Christopher Greenwell and
Statistics New Zealand. (2005, June). Focusing on women 2005. (Catalogue No. 16.001). Retrieved from http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/people_and_communities/Women/focusing-on-women.aspx
The United States has one of the highest gender pay gaps among the developed countries. In the country, the gender pay gap is measured as the ratio of female to males yearly earning among workers in full-time, year round (FTYR) earnings. In 2009, female FTYR earned 77% (0.77) as much as the FTYR male workers (US Census Bureau, 2013). The history of Gender Gap earning reveals USA has made big strides towards reducing the gender pay gap from 1980. For instance, in 1980 the gender pay gap ratio was 0.62 while in 1990, the gap stood at 0.72. Further from 1990 to 2000, the gap reduced to 0.73 and then to 0.77 in 2009. Currently, the gender pay gap stands at 0.76 and continues to persist (US Census Bureau, 2013).
Women are more than half the work force and are graduating at higher rates then men and continue to earn considerably less then men. There are several contributing factors to the gender wage gap. Women experience gender discrimination in the work force even though it’s been illegal since the Equal Pay Act in 1963. One of the challenges for women is uncovering discrimination. There is a lack of transparency in earnings because employees are either contractually prohibited or it’s strongly discouraged from being discussed. Discrimination also occurs in the restricting of women’s access to jobs with the highest commission payments, or access to lucrative clients.
and men, however, this is only true for not even one-quarter of it (ibid., p.539). Other studies argue that sex segregation plays a large role and can be considered as the key factor for the existence as well as ongoing of the gender pay gap (ibid., p.540). Not only is the vast majority of labour work, which fulfilled by women, feminised, it is also lower valued in comparison to the labour work men fulfil (ibid.). Moreover, there are three ways how the public sector helds the gender pay gap (1) in the position of a monopolistic sector, the public sector uses such power to keep wages in certain areas down, as for example in the health sector and education sector (2) the high influence of rational economic thinking, which restraints the sectors payments (3) circumstances like downsizing, subcontracting, and privatisation play generally a large role towards decreasing employment opportunities and unsecure wage levels (ibid., p.541). Furthermore, other studies show that another key factor of Australia´s gender pay gap is the level individuals are placed in terms of that the majority of women remain in rather lower levels of employment, whereas men are more likely to go up the employment latter (ibid.).
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
Today in the United States, gender inequality is prevalent in the home, sports, schools, politics, and the workplace. Of all situations, the workplace has to be, by far, the most critical. Being that discrimination based on gender directly affects a woman’s income, the gender wage gap needs to be permanently closed. In households in which only the mother is employed, single-parent households, one woman households in which there are no children, and two-woman households, women face the adversity of making less than their male counterpart, and the difference in their pay could be what determines whether their family lives in poverty. As a woman of color or disabled woman, that amount could be even lower. For these reasons, employers must offer the same pay to all employees who are doing the same work, regardless of gender.
Since the beginning of time, men and women have been separated. Men would always be the supporters of the family while women would care for their family. With this being true, they would have different jobs set for them. Even now this aspect of society still stands. Even though the women’s movement has happened and we claim that women are equal, we really are not. Sexism in our society is negatively affecting women in the workforce. Women are not represented equally in different jobs, they suffer harassment, a wage gap exists, and discrimination against them still has an effect and has done so since the beginning of history.
Discrimination for women in the workforce in the 1900’s were fewer than 25% of those who participated in the labor market. But in today’s time the percent has risen to around 75% and is still growing. As many women were affected in the workforce by prejudice. One in four women go though discrimination during the workforce process at least once during her life. Unlike men women are more likely to accept a lower income job because they have a house to clean, and also a husband and family to take care of. A fact is known that all women will make less over their lifetime then men will. More women are encouraged to follow the stereotypical career path such as nursing and teaching then doing construction work or even being a truck
The opportunities available to women in the market are not as diverse as those presented to men. Still, the construct of gender ideology influences how employers undertake economic decisions, and that is why companies still have jobs labelled as “men’s work” and occupations categorized as “women’s work.” Indeed, the pervasiveness of gender differences in labor markets is undeniably true, specifically with respect to salary gap between men and women, occupational gender segregation of men and women, and the challenge that women face in terms of juggling their time and attention between their career and family life. There is no denying that the salary of men is far more than that of women’s. In the Great Britain (and other parts of the globe), there are pieces of evidence which suggest that gendered practices of participation in the labor force still have significant impact on the economic security level that men and women develop over the course of their lives (Warren 606).
“Anything you can do I can do better, I can do anything better than you”