Though we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of women entering the labor force market, we are still seeing a majority of these women being placed into a sex-segregated labor market that devalues the work that these women do. In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich showcases how the women were devalued in the workplace, by showing how devaluation led to these women facing health issues, housing issues, and horrible working conditions as well.
Why are most doctors and CEOs mostly male? Why are most nurses and waitresses mostly female? Well, these two questions can be answered by one simple explanation. Sex-segregation would be the answer for all of this. Sex-segregation is a system of the unequal distribution of men and women throughout the workplace. In the work place, sex-segregation is probably one of the most visible forms of inequality in our labor market. Rarely, do we ever see men and women working in the same field in the same position. If men and women are in the same field with the same position, more than likely, they would be performing different tasks for the same position. Because of this, you will typically see how there are unequal levels of responsibility and authority. Sex-segregation in the labor force market isn’t something that happened over night, sex-segregation in the labor force market has been happening for decades. During early American societies, majority of the work being done was in or near the home. But with the rise of industrialization, separation among work and home would emerge. At this time, it was said that the public sphere (work) was for men and that the private sphere (home) was for women. Not only were women told that the home was the only place for them, but if they did decide to...
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...ow-wage jobs are having to put themselves in a dangerous situations just to get the job done and to ultimately keep their jobs. Working in a sex-segregated labor force market that devalues the work women do, means putting up with a sexist work environment to support themselves and their family because they know they cannot survive economically.
Over the decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of women entering the labor force market. Though these numbers may be astonishing, the reality is, many of these women are still facing a labor force market that continues to devalue the work that many of them do. In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich notes that women are devalued in the workplace, by showcasing the devaluation that many of these women faced in account of their health issues, housing issues, and their horrible working conditions as well.
In her expose, Nickel and Dime, Barbara Ehrenreich shares her experience of what it is like for unskilled women to be forced to be put into the labor market after the welfare reform that was going on in 1998. Ehrenreich wanted to capture her experience by retelling her method of “uncover journalism” in a chronological order type of presentation of events that took place during her endeavor. Her methodologies and actions were some what not orthodox in practice. This was not to be a social experiment that was to recreate a poverty social scenario, but it was to in fact see if she could maintain a lifestyle working low wage paying jobs the way 4 million women were about to experience it. Although Ehrenreich makes good use of rhetoric (ethos, pathos, logos), she is very effective at portraying pathos, trying to get us to understand why we should care about a social situation such as this through, credibility, emotion, and logic.
For several decades, most American women occupied a supportive, home oriented role within society, outside of the workplace. However, as the mid-twentieth century approached a gender role paradigm occurred. The sequence of the departure of men for war, the need to fill employment for a growing economy, a handful of critical legal cases, the Black Civil Rights movement seen and heard around the nation, all greatly influenced and demanded social change for human and women’s rights. This momentous period began a social movement known as feminism and introduced a coin phrase known in and outside of the workplace as the “wage-gap.”
In Antigone and Sister Carrie, all women work for men or stay at home with their children. Modernly speaking, women’s role in the workforce has dramatically increased, especially in terms of the number of women participating. According to the Census Bureau, “In terms of sheer numbers, women’s presence in the labor force has increased dramatically, from 30.3 million in 1970 to 72.7 million during 2006-2010.” Although women have worked their way into the workforce, women still face many different systemic struggles. One of the most recently talked about issues is the pay gap between men and women. Women make less money than men for doing the same
While the median weekly pay for women rose in the past decades, it is still largely inferior to the median weekly pay of men employed in the same jobs. This difference of pay also puts an additional burden on women who are expected to stay home when emergencies arise. They cannot in some cases pay for daycare or rely on their companies’ understanding that someone has to take care of the family obligations. In result, they are penalized when comes the time to find candidates for promotion and are seen as not as dependable as their male counterparts. Finally, women face a social bias against them that encompass gender, appearance and race. It effectively punishes them for reasons that are out of their own control and not related to their job performance and skills. Laws against gender-based discrimination, more flexible workplace arrangements and a change in our culture regarding women may help fight discrimination and help women reach their full potential in the workforce. By starting to allow for more flexibility, paying women on a comparable scale than the one used for men, and support women in their desire to take care of their families, corporations could set the tone for a fairer treatment of women in the
Until the Feminist Movement in the 1960’s, women faced enormous inequality in the workforce. (E-Collaborative, 2014) Many jobs prior to this time were limited to only males, women often held submissive occupations, working under the supervision of a man. In many instances both sexes were carrying out the same responsibilities but were paid on an entirely differ...
The institutionalized discrimination of women in the work place is nothing new or unheard of. The brunt of it has happened fairly recently as women began to enter the labor market in force less than a century ago. The affect of this discrimination has had long lasting, generation spanning affects, but as time has passed and feminism spread, the gender-gap has slowly begun to shrink.
There are nearly as many women as there are men working, yet, as it was discovered in 2011, on average, a woman will only earn seventy-seven cents for every dollar that a man earns. Women owned businesses make up for over a quarter of all national businesses and earn more than one point two trillion dollars (“Assessing the Past, Taking Stock of the Future” 6). Since many women are now becoming are the primary sources of income in the household, making less that a man does not only negatively affect families, but also the overall economy suffers as well. These women, among many others, are the ones who end up purchasing the supplies that go toward improving communities and stimulating the economy. There is no reason that the general public should stand for this. Women should be treated equally to men in today’s American society based on their biological compositions, psychological profiles and contributions to history.
. 1975 The second wave of women entering the job market was motivated less by desire and more by necessity and the need to earn money. Everything cost more now and the amenities of middle class existence can no longer be maintained on a single income. With the rising cost of houses, cars, college, private schools. The economic facts are clear, women must work. Now is the time for women's equality from Congress to all other government and corporate decision-making levels. With men, we get rhetoric, more problems and no answers, but lots of excuses. In the political arena women are making strides throughout America. Although women elected to positions of prominence do not always take pro-women positions, their presence makes a difference. The transnational company that works within government structures and agencies is in an ideal position to use its home country experience working with women managers, and executives to positively reinforce the role of women in government in those jurisdictions where the company has subsidiary operations. Although there are many ex...
Gender inequality in the workforce is not only a current civil rights issue but one that spans back through our history as a nation. Rooted as far back as the 1800s when the Cult of Domesticity
A huge problem in the working world is the issue of equal pay between men and women in the workplace. Once stance taken is that women are specifically targeted and that they are payed less than the average income of a man who has the same education and who works in the same profession while the other stance states that men and women are paid as close to equal as possible considering the careers taken. The issue of equal pay for women is considered an embarrassment. The term ¨embarrassment” is not an accurate term to describe the issue when so many factors go into how much women are paid. In 2014, a study showed that women earned 77 percent of what a man in the same position earned the same year. This looks bad, but
Today woman are not held back by the mere notion that they are woman so they should do this because society norms say so. Women have been trying to get into male heavy jobs such as construction. Even though this are generally seen as male dominated jobs the high pay has lead woman out of the public sector and into these high paying manual labor jobs. Although, the cycle no longer continues the struggle for equality is a never ending, in which woman are continually fighting for. In recent years there has been a raise in woman’s unionizations that has helped them create a voice within the general public. Increase in unionizations has led to a decrease in wage gap for many local and major cities in the United States. Employees who are represented by a union have the necessary voice to establish higher equality policies within the
Women are more than half the work force and are graduating at higher rates then men and continue to earn considerably less then men. There are several contributing factors to the gender wage gap. Women experience gender discrimination in the work force even though it’s been illegal since the Equal Pay Act in 1963. One of the challenges for women is uncovering discrimination. There is a lack of transparency in earnings because employees are either contractually prohibited or it’s strongly discouraged from being discussed. Discrimination also occurs in the restricting of women’s access to jobs with the highest commission payments, or access to lucrative clients.
It is very important to be concerned about the issue because it is constantly increasing throughout the United States. It upsets me that women are paid less than men because women have the same ability and work ethic as men do, but they are looked at differently. According to AAUW, women make 77 percent of what men make. This rate hasn’t changed since 2002 (Hill, 2013). Statistics show that women will never make as much as men due to the thought of never being comparable to men (Williams, 2013).
Men have dominated the workforce for most of civilization up until their patriotic duties called away to war. All of a sudden, the women were responsible for providing for their family while the men were away. Women went to work all over America to earn an income to insure their family’s survival. Women took all sorts of jobs including assembly line positions, office jobs, and even playing professional baseball. When the men returned home from war, the women were expected to resume their place as housewives. The women who had gotten a taste of the professional life decided that they wanted to continue working. Thus, the introduction to women in a man’s working environment began. Women were not taken seriously at first, because they were stepping into a “man’s world”.
In today’s society, Women perform similar jobs to men. Whether it’s blue or white collar jobs, women are always present and thriving for success balancing a life of business and family. In the job market, some are graduates of the best schools and have interned at the best firms, but are still not compensated as equally as men. Following the recent comments by the CEO of Microsoft concerning women asking for raises and how they should trust the system to install equality, the issue seems to be still present, and women’s work is not rewarded similarly to men’s.