Gender Discrimination Continues to Reflect in Wage Gap

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Sex discrimination is still a major problem of today. In many different ways, women are deemed “lesser” than men, and one major example of this problem is the wage gap. Unfortunately, the wage gap still exists, and it is completely sickening. Many people disagree and say that the wage gap is non-existent, but that is far from the truth. The wage gap needs to close, because women don't deserve any less than men do. I am currently on the path to earn a degree in Computer Science, which falls into the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field. After doing research, I discovered how different the annual earnings of men and women were. On average, the hourly income for men in STEM jobs is $36.34, while women in the same field earn only $31.11. For every dollar a man in STEM makes, a woman in STEM earns 86 cents. A whopping 86%. In 2009, there were 2.5 million college-educated working women with STEM degrees, compared to 6.7 million men. This just shows that even with a college education, the men are still favored over the women and earn more money. As a matter of fact, in 1999, University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee conducted a study where two people would hand in the same exact resume to several employers- the only difference being the name, Karen or Brian- and it turned out that 25% of the male evaluators favored the male, while only 15% favored the female. Of the female evaluators, 24% favored the male candidate, which is twice as many as the 12% that favored the female. If you're a woman in the workforce, the best city to live in for the wage gap is Los Angeles, California. The median salary for men (in STEM and non-STEM jobs) is $44,607, while the women's median is $40,777. On the contrary, the worst city ... ... middle of paper ... ...ge gap closely affects me and my future, as I want to become a computer scientist. The wage gap will leave me with less money overall than what a man would make, and that definitely is not going to settle with me. I will not settle for anything less than what a man makes because I don't deserve that. We need fairness. No one is better than anyone else! If we could all work together to close the wage gap by educating girls at a young age that they are just as capable of succeeding at math and science just as well as boys can, then we could have a greater amount of STEM workers and the United States could remain the global innovation leader. Actually, the wage gap shouldn't close only for one specific area of work- the wage gap should close for every area of work. Closing the wage gap would solve so many problems, and the women of the nation would be much happier too!

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