Essay On The Gender Wage Gap

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. The wage gap is a prevalent issue in the United States and must be closed in order to increase the quality of life for women across all fields of expertise. In 2014, female full-time workers made only 79 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 21 percent (“Pay Equity & Discrimination”). As a woman who does the same amount of work for the same amount of time, just as well as as her male counterpart, the existence of a wage gap

Reasons could include explaining the time they’re on maternity leave for having children as taking away from their business and productivity of employees, or that a man’s work is superior to a woman’s in some way. Both of these points are invalid, as there are laws in place to protect a woman’s rights while pregnant and after having a child, such as the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and Family and Medical Leave Act and there have been studies conducted in reference to a man and woman’s productivity in the