Gender Pay Gap Essay

Does The Gender Pay Gap Exist? The pay gap between genders is increasingly becoming a hot topic of discussion. Recently I have witnessed conversations, read news articles and heard stories about women being paid unfairly and only making a small percentage of what men earn. Forbes Magazine states that in the last decade, full-time working women on average only make 77 percent of what men earn (Maatz). There is even a day dedicated to recognizing when women’s wages finally match men’s wages from the previous year; this day is called Equal Pay Day (Maatz).
The problem of the gender pay gap is important to me because it is something that will personally affect me upon my graduation from college. As defined in the Cambridge Dictionary, the gender pay gap is “the difference between the amounts of money paid to women and men, often for

In 2016, Equal Pay Day will be Tuesday, April 12th. Betsey Stevenson, who is a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote an article titled “Five Facts About the Gender Pay Gap” for whitehouse.gov, which states that the pay gap goes beyond just wages. Stevenson goes on to say that women are also less likely to receive benefits such as health insurance and to have access to paid leave (Stevenson). Stevenson also offers up the idea that as a women’s career grows so does the pay gap between her and her male co-workers. It states in the article that men and women tend to start out on the same levels of earnings but as their careers grow this gap increases (Stevenson). Stevenson says that this is most likely due to the fact that women get fewer raises because they tend to negotiate less for them. If they do negotiate for their salaries, then they may still receive less than men or they could be seen as “unpleasant” because they tried to negotiate and go against social norms