Essay On Wage Disparities

Should employers be required to pay men and women the same salary for the same job?

Men have been paid more than women are paid over their lifetimes. Why is this? Women are almost half of the Americas workforce. They do the same jobs as men and in a lot of cases are the family breadwinner in 4 out of 10 families (Henderson). If you look at the numbers women are 3 times more likely to have a college degree than men but are still paid less. In wage study conducted in 2015 women were shown to make 79 cents for every dollar earned by men, a complete wage gap of 21 percent. Women earn less then men in nearly every occupation with enough date to calculate the correct earnings ratio. Pew Research has noticed that the pay gap between men and women

An additional question one make ask is when exactly do wage disparities kick in? Wage disparities kick in shortly after college graduation, when women and men should, absent discrimination, be on a level playing field. One year after graduating college, women are paid on average only 82 percent of their male counterparts’ wages, and during the next 10 years, women’s wages fall even further behind, dropping to only 69 percent of men’s earnings ten years after college. According to the AAUW report, “even after researchers controlled for age, education, hours worked beyond full time, industry sector, marital status, and presence of children in the household, female managers still earned just 81 percent of what male managers did, leaving an unexplained 19 percent pay gap,” and later observed, “women continue to earn less than men do, even when they make the same choices” (Darnell).Women still are not receiving equal pay for equal work, let alone equal pay for work of equal value. This disparity not only affects women’s spending power, it penalizes their retirement security by creating gaps in Social Security and pensions. Now to the final question, how can we eliminate this pay gap and be paid the same salaries