The Gender Pay Gap Myth Summary

In the recent article of 2016, “What is the Gender Pay Gap and is it Real?”, the authors Elise Gould, Jessica Schieder, and Kathleen Geier give an ample amount of statistics that prove that women are paid less than men; for example, a woman was paid less than a man of the same education, experience, and occupation. In Kevin Miller’s article “The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap,” he states that full-time working women get paid 80 percent of what men are paid (Miller). According to the two articles mentioned above, factors such as age, stereotypes, and ethnicity can be the cause of the gender wage gap. In the 2016 article of “Four Ways the Gender Pay Gap Isn’t All It Seems,” author Simon Maybin claims that the gender wage gap does not exist

According to “Four Ways the Gender Pay Gap Isn’t All It Seems,” the statistics are so vague that any conclusion can be drawn from them (Maybin). The article “Don’t Buy into the Gender Pay Gap Myth” also agrees that the statistics about women receiving 77 percent of what men receive is too vague and doesn’t include the dynamics that could affect female’s lower pay (Agness). Agness claims that those who promote the statistic of women receiving around 80 percent of what men obtain are only manipulating the statistic to make women believe that they are victims of lower payment (Agness). Women’s lower years of experience, education, and hours worked will cause the gap to be larger than it seems (Agness). Maybin states, “Women are three times more likely to be part-time workers than men. One in seven men are part-timers compared to three in seven women.” (Maybin). Furthermore, those who do not believe that the gender wage gap exists will argue that females have a legal entitlement to equal pay for equal work. Both Simon Maybin and Karin Agness agree that due to the Equal Pay Act, females should not be receiving a lower pay than males. Maybin also makes the point that part-time workers will get a lower hourly pay than full-time workers, and that is not just because of their fewer hours (Maybin). According to the article, part-time female workers are paid 32 percent less per hour than the women full-time workers (Maybin). Therefore, the overall statistic of women’s pays existing as 80 percent of men’s pay is overly manipulated because women will generally choose lower paying jobs and work fewer