Gender Wage Gaps

Gender and Income/Wages
In 1964, the Civil Rights Act made it illegal for employers to discriminate against individuals on the basis of gender, color, race, and religion. This act was passed for the purpose of providing equality for all groups of society in the work field. However, despite the act's demand for equal pay, gender wage gaps are still noticeable today. In fact, AAUW The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap explains, “If change continues at the slower rate seen since 2001, women will not reach pay equity with men until year 2152”(4).
How Income/Wages Differs Across Gender Groups
It appears that despite women’s huge gains in their educational attainment and sustained efforts, advancements concerning gender equality are askew

and seems to be impeded. The topmost well-known measure of gender inequality is the wage gap. As stated by David B. Grusky and Szonja Szelenyi in their book The Inequality Reader: In 1970, women earned roughly fifty-nine cents to every dollar earned by a man. We have progressed largely because women have been occupying higher paying jobs. The gap now stands at seventy-eight cents to every dollar(338). But needless to say we’re still unequal in fact that we are so unequal that as stated by National Women’s Law Center, “Based on today’s wage gap, a woman who worked full time, year round would typically lose $418,800 in a 40-year period. This woman would have to work more than ten years longer to make up this lifetime wage gap. A woman working full time, year round who starts, but does not finish high school would typically lose $378,920 over a 40-year period, compared to her male counterpart who does not finish high school, an enormous amount of money for women who typically make $22,670 a year. A woman would have to work sixteen years longer to make up this gap. These lost wages severely reduce women’s ability to save for retirement.”
Law was one the first higher paying fields to open up to women. And even though half of all law degrees awarded were to women in 2001, only fifteen percent of federal judges and law firm partners were women. At the same time women were only ten percent of all law school deans and general counsels. This is only one of the many examples on how women were, and still are, often cheated out of high paying jobs (that their education has allowed them to enter) due to discrimination, societal norms, and other forces beyond women’s control.
According to more recent studies by the U.S Census Bureau: In 2015 women working full time jobs in the United States were paid eighty percent, a twenty percent wage gap. That earnings ratio hasn’t had significant annual change since 2007. This ratio does change when comparing women with children and women without children, moreso men with children. As expressed in The Inequality Reader: Women with children were often stereotyped as less committed than women without children and were “penalized” by having a recommended starting salary of $11,000, that being 7.4 percent less than what was offered to non mothers (369). You would think that the same penalty would be presented to males with children, but contrarily fathers were not disadvantaged but were rather advantaged because they were found more committed to their jobs and were offered higher salaries.
There is no way in denying that these wage gaps exist between gender groups. A survey of U.S adults conducted in 2016 stated that about twenty-seven percent of women said that their gender has made it harder for them to succeed in life compared to only seven percent of men making that claim. At the same time men are more likely to admit that their gender has helped them and made it easier to succeed in life than about only eight percent of women making that claim. So, it is evident that to the American people it is clear that their gender affects their income/wages.
Why Income/Wages are Different Between Gender Groups
One of the biggest reasons for the gender wage gap is that women and men work in different occupations and industries. Gender is used to divide work in the home and economic realms. Women's jobs tend to mimic the work that they would do at home like child care and housework which then leads them to jobs such as sales, clerical, secretaries, administrative assistants, registered nurses, and school teachers all of which typically have lower wages than those that men occupy. According to The Long Shadow by Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson: “Clerical and services account for 66 percent of African American women’s full-time employment and 53 percent of white women’s, and neither group has much presence in the high-pay skilled construction craft”(170). It is argued that we would be able to avoid the gender wage gap if women would stop selecting to go into female-dominated industries, but we know there are factors that causes these kind of choices. For example, gender socialization teaches women at a very early age to incorporate traits like nurturing and service to others because these traits will render smoothly into traditional feminine jobs.
Having children is also a factor to why there is a gender wage gap. Women not only work in lower paying industries than men, but they also were fewer hours. According to The Inequality Reader, “Mother’s work 35 minutes less per day than men, among full-time working men and women”(366). Not surprising to notice that when work and childcare are accounted for the time gap is very different between men and women. Again, due to gender socialization, fathers do not spend the same amount of time as mothers taking care of their children while still maintaining a job. Father are often times advantaged to work more hours if needed and were offered significantly higher salaries in part because fathers are assumed to be the breadwinners for their families even though most married men have working partners (Grusky et al. 369).
Along with mothers working fewer hours than men and non-mothers, women with children also earn lower salaries than those who do not have children. Women are forced to reluctantly choose between work or family. This happens because these women are in families that are used to the man works so they cannot leave their careers to take care of the child and the woman is still often seen as the primary caretakers, forcing her to leave her job.
There are also unexplained factors that take roll into the gender wage gap.

Legitimate reasons that we can blame for the gender wage gap only covers 55 percent, according to 2003 US Government Accountability Office. This leaves 45 percent of the gender wage gap with an illegitimate reason. At least some of this is due to discrimination, even if it is subtle and subconscious. Gender discrimination in the work industry could be displayed in the hiring process, promotions that are given, and pay practices of the business. Like I mentioned before, most of the discrimination goes to women that have children. Many mothers feel that they were faced with penalties for seeking flexibility needed to make home/work life balance work and were often forced to quit their job. As stated before, employers discriminate against women with children because as expressed in The Inequality Reader: Women with children were often stereotyped as less committed than women without children and were “penalized” by having a recommended starting salary of $11,000, that being 7.4 percent less than what was offered to non mothers

(369).
Policies That Might Alleviate Gaps in Income/Wages Across Gender Groups
We know that equal pay is crucial for all women and since getting educated, working more and more continuously, and moving out of dead-end, low paying “pink-collar” jobs isn’t enough some policies are going to have to change or strengthen. So in order to achieve equal pay we need to build up our equal pay laws so that women are more capable to fight back against pay discrimination. Women are able to do this by taking notes if they suspect they are being paid unfairly so they can create a foundation for either a friendly negotiation or, if necessary, a formal complaint or a lawsuit. The Paycheck Fairness Act would enhance the scope of the Equal Pay Act, which has yet to be updated since 1963, with more powerful motivation for employers to follow the law, strengthen federal enforcement efforts, and interdict retaliation against workers asking about wage practices. It is very important to inform the Congress to take action for equal pay. It is also important to construct ladders to better paying jobs for women by removing barriers to entry into male-dominated fields. According to The Inequality Reader, “women have entered formerly male-dominated, high prestige, lucrative, and powerful professions one all but closed to them”(337). Which is why the gender wage gap has slightly closed. Also, another huge policy that could be improved is minimum wage. Lifting up the wages of women in low-wage jobs by raising the minimum wage and also by guaranteeing that every tipped workers receives at least the regular minimum wage before they receive their tips. That will also help diminish the gender wage gap because women make up a large percentage of the low-wage workers. By extending the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour it would raise wages for millions of women and help reduce the gender wage gap. An important step is helping women with children because aside from women of color, women with children are very discriminated against in the work field as I described. An enlargement in the accessibility of high-quality, affordable child care would also help prevent and become a solution for caregiver and pregnancy discrimination against women workers.
According to Center for American Progress by Sarah Jane Glynn, “Legislation such as the proposed Strong Start for America’s Children Act invests in high-quality and sustainable early learning environments for young children, working families, and the future of our country.” Investing in affordable, high-quality child care will create long-established formations that support both working parents, but especially mothers, and children.

By increasing women’s capability to keep a job they need, be preeminent in the workforce, and once again lower the gender wage gap. The Healthy Families Act would entrench that workers have access to paid sick days and that they would not have to worry if it wasn’t financially possible for them to pay the medical bills if they or their children were to fall ill. “The Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, would create a federal paid family and medical leave program that would provide up to 12 weeks of partial wage replacement after the birth of a new child, to provide care for a seriously ill family member, or to recover from a worker’s own serious illness, building on the job protection offered by the Family and Medical Leave Act of

1993”(Glynn).
These actions that I presented are insured opportunities to lower the wage gap in the United States of America and together they can bring us together to becoming equal in the workforce and leaving the wage gap in history.