Rosie The Riveter Thesis

It was during World War I and II women entered into the workforce for jobs other than administrative positions, to fill the shoes of the millions of men who had gone off to fight in the war. Administrative positions always paid less than positions traditionally held by men. The government encouraged women to work in factories, comparing their use of a blender to that of a drill. It was in 1942, where a popular image of a housewife dressed in a factory workers shirt with a bandana tied around her head, affectionately called, “Rosie the Riveter” with the tagline, “We Can Do It!” was created. “Rosie the Riveter is the female icon of World War II. She is the home-front equivalent of G.I. Joe. She represents any woman defense worker. And for many

women, she's an example of a strong, competent foremother.” Women kept America afloat at just half the price of a male worker, proving they were just as capable as their male counterparts and less expensive.
Because of the large number of American women taking jobs in the war industries during World War II, the National War Labor Board urged employers in 1942 to voluntarily make "adjustments which equalize wage or salary rates paid to females with the rates paid to males for comparable quality and quantity of work on the same or similar operations." Not only did employers fail to heed this "voluntary" request, but at the war's end most women were pushed out of their new jobs to make room for returning veterans.

(Brunner, Rowen)

Women were dismissed from their jobs and given positions as Domestic Engineers also known as housewives. They were told they were needed to help America in another way, by helping America grow by going back home to bear children. Men and women have different levels of education and work experience; they commonly work in different industries and different occupations. Supply and demand, unions and minimum wage, influences the pay gap between genders. This in turn influences the economy as a whole, education, experience and wage

differentials.

The gender wage gap or gender pay gap is described as men receiving a higher pay than women.

There are many factors used to determine how much someone’s work is worth; like: education, experience, the ability to negotiate your salary, the type of job and industry chose, discrimination, and so forth. However, sexual discrimination is nearly half of the deciding factor; reports show that in 2014, women earned 79 percent of what their male counterparts earned. But that does that really mean? What other factors are responsible for how much women actually bring home and are women to blame? Since the 1970s there have been substantial improvements in closing the pay gap between men and women and women have come a long way in the workforce. However, it is still a difficult subject because there are so many factors that can also play a key role; factors like race and demographic location. The gender pay gap does not only affect the woman receiving the lower pay, gender pay discrimination effects the family, economy, and the community. Republicans in the Senate have continuously blocked a Democratic bill that would assist with strengthening equal pay laws for women. The bill called the Paycheck Fairness Act is critical legislation that addresses several gaps in the Equal Pay Act. Republicans have been under scrutiny lately for blocking the bill, therefore earlier this year on March 26, 2015, the women senators of the GOP proposed a bill of their own called, the Workplace Advancement

Act, which prohibits discrimination in the payment of wages on account of sex.

Half of today’s workforce consists of women, in a number of households they are an equal part, if not the sole provider in most households and acquire more degrees than men. However, women still earn 21 percent less than men; this is a slight increase from 2013, when the wage gap was just 77 percent. However, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research projects women will not reach pay parity with men until the year 2059. Previously, there was an occupational segregation between men and women. Women in the workforce held mostly secretarial positions and administrative positions. Many women were not allowed to attend colleges and obtain degrees which also kept them from obtaining better positions. Almost every second worker is a woman. Women are Police Officers, Judges, Lawyers, Constructions Workers, CEOs, and Astronauts, yet their pay does not equal their work. “Women have made tremendous strides during the last few decades by moving into jobs and occupations previously done almost exclusively by men, yet during the last decade there has been very little further progress in the gender integration of work.” (www.ipwr.org) In 1965, women made 65 percent of a man’s salary, that is 14 percent less compared to the 79 percent of the man’s wage the average woman makes today.

Until the 1960s, jobs were categorized by sex, higher paying jobs would request male applicants and jobs that were suitable for both a male and female would display separate pay scales. The passage of the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 1963, signed by Former President John F. Kennedy, made it illegal to pay women less than men strictly based on their sex, once it came into effect on June 11, 1964. Between June 1964 and January 1971, 71,000 women were paid back wages of nearly $26 million. Even though the wage gap has improved over the past fifty years, there is still a huge disparity between men and women’s wages. If you calculate the how much the gap has narrowed over the past fifty years on average it is .28 percent per year. The question remains, “why is there still such a large gap after fifty years?” the wage gap consists of all workers young and old; many older women that still remain in the workforce are factored into the wage statistics and work based on the pay scale when they began at their places of employment. Newer female employees start out with higher salaries than those that came before them; their salaries are closer to that of their male counterparts starting out. However as they accumulate over time, men tend to rise up in the ranks automatically increasing their salaries while most women do not. "30% of the variation in gender wage gaps across OECD countries can be explained by discriminatory practices in the labor market." (Grover) Women currently hold 22 (4.4%) of CEO positions at Standard & Poor's 500 companies. 19.2 percent hold board seats, 25.1 percent hold Executive/Senior-Level positions, 36.8 percent hold Mid-level positions, and 45 percent are at the Labor level. (Fig 1) The Academy of Management Journal reported October 2015, that based on a studies spanning thirty years, there were gender differences in rewards that included salaries, bonuses, and promotions that were fourteen times larger than the actual performance evaluations. What this means is, even though the performance evaluations were at the same level and the employees appeared to have been making the same achievements workwise, the male employees received larger pay increases, bonuses, and promotions than their female counterparts.