The Gender Wage Gap In The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

1504 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Pay gap between genders essay

The Gender Wage Gap The gender wage gap is a highly debated and controversial topic in the modern day United States society. Women have been treated very poorly in the past, and advancements in gender equality are still flourishing today. Although are making great strides as a society, there is still the popular belief in the wage gap. However, the wage gap that was once very prominent in our society is not nearly as much of a disparity as people have been lead to believe. Though any pay disparity between women and men is a pressing issue, the “wage gap” is much more complicated than people believe because of misleading statistics, unaccounted for variables, and the different social and economic choices of men and women. The common idea that women make 77 cents on every dollar men make in the workplace is very misleading. It is true, however, this statistic ignores any factors that justify different pay. The wage gap is just the difference …show more content…

The situation for women in the workplace is far from perfect; however, the US has made immense strides from what it was in the early to mid-20th Century. A prime example of this is the novel, The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair. This novel exposes the horrors of the workplace in Chicago in the 1920’s. For example, the main character's wife Ona is forced into unwanted sexual harassment and is even raped by her boss. Her boss threatens to fire her if she did not obey him and, without a job, Onas’ family would suffer horribly. However, in the modern day American society, women's treatment in the workplace is improving. Movements including the “Me Too” movement have inspired many women in the workplace to stand up for themselves and to not tolerate sexual harassment. However, if one wants to see progress in the workplace, a good place to start would be to stop promoting the misleading wage gap

Show More
Related

  • A Historical Perspective: The Wage Gap

    1598 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.”

    Read More

  • Wage Inequality And The Texas State Government

    1311 Words  | 3 Pages

    The reality of wage differences between men and women is that above all changes women continue to earn less than men. Countless arguments have promoted that wage inequality has changed and that everyone finally receives an equal amount of pay. “For women of color, the gap is largest of all: In 2006, black and Hispanic women earned 86 and 87 cents on the white man’s dollar, respectively,” (Mcswane 2). If a woman is lucky enough she will get an equal pay compared to a man doing the same job. But it is challenging for a woman of a minority background to achieve this. Not only are women paid less because of their sex, but also because of their race. There seems to be a mentality that because someone is a woman and a minority that they cannot do the same job as men or that women do not have the same education as the men, so employers do not have to pay them the same. “When the numbers are broken down by district, they 're pretty hard to ignore. Women in Texas are being utterly screwed financially, according to the data compiled by AAWU, with women earning anywhere from 66 percent of what men do in some districts, to the top end of things, which is about 89 percent,” (Leicht 4). The proof cannot be ignored. It i...

    Read More

  • Social Stratification Analysis Paper

    614 Words  | 2 Pages

    There is a pay gap between men and women in the U.S. The pay gap affects women of all educations levels, and backgrounds. But white men are the largest demographic in labor forces so they possibly favor each other as opposed to women. The graph didn’t specify the type of jobs, or whether they were working parts time or fulltime. But in 2016, women working full time in the U.S. were paid 80% of what men were getting paid. There are some occupations that have not reached the equity but some have like retail, banking and real

    Read More

  • Gender Pay Gap Analysis

    1036 Words  | 3 Pages

    Additionally, we believed men deserved to have higher power by getting more money than women. After some research, we think it’s not fair that women make less than men who have the same education and the same job. In the long run, it can make it hard for women to support their families. We found out that the gender pay gap is a “complex issue with many causes”, which are often inter-related. It seems that the direct cause of this issue is discrimination. We also found out that inequality starts early; just one year out of college, college-educated women working full-time earned $32,000 compared to $42,000 for college-educated men working

    Read More

  • Gender Payage Gap Essay

    1384 Words  | 3 Pages

    The wage gap not only represents gender discrimination in the workplace, it also reflects the ongoing issue of racial discrimination. While white women do typically earn less than white men, they out earn the majority of female colored workers in America. The average African American female makes only 64 cents for the white man’s dollar. Additionally, Hispanic women receive only 54 cents to their white male coworker’s dollar (Hegewisch para. 9).

    Read More

  • Gender Gap In Pay

    1584 Words  | 4 Pages

    The United States has one of the highest gender pay gaps among the developed countries. In the country, the gender pay gap is measured as the ratio of female to males yearly earning among workers in full-time, year round (FTYR) earnings. In 2009, female FTYR earned 77% (0.77) as much as the FTYR male workers (US Census Bureau, 2013). The history of Gender Gap earning reveals USA has made big strides towards reducing the gender pay gap from 1980. For instance, in 1980 the gender pay gap ratio was 0.62 while in 1990, the gap stood at 0.72. Further from 1990 to 2000, the gap reduced to 0.73 and then to 0.77 in 2009. Currently, the gender pay gap stands at 0.76 and continues to persist (US Census Bureau, 2013).

    Read More

  • Gender Wage Gap Essay

    1711 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Gender Wage Inequality

    1646 Words  | 4 Pages

    One cannot begin the discussion of the gender pay gap without defining it. Simply put, the gender pay gap is the inequality between men and women's wages. The gender pay gap is a constant international problem, in which women are paid, on average, less than that of their male counterparts. As to whether gender pay gap still exists, its exactness fluctuates depending on numerous factors such as professional status, country and regional location, gender, and age. In regards to gender, in some cases, both men and women have stated that the gap does not exist.

    Read More

  • Gender Wage Gap

    1259 Words  | 3 Pages

    What is the gender wage gap? How does it affect you? The gender wage gap is the difference between women’s and men’s earnings. This pay gap has been in existence since before the 1960s. Although the gender wage gap still persists, it has narrowed immensely over the years.

    Read More

  • Discrimination of Women in the Workplace

    723 Words  | 2 Pages

    Discrimination at work is a touchy issue. Most people, if not all, have experienced some sort or form of it and they ignored it, quit, or got fired from their job. Women tend to be more emotional than men and when women are judged and discriminated they are offended by it immediately. Also, the fact of women getting a lower income than men for the same job is almost unbelievable. It is very important to be concerned on 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 are making 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).

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Gender Pay Gap

    1464 Words  | 3 Pages

    Are you aware that in 2015, women who were working full time in the United States were only paid 80 percent of what men were paid, at a 20 percent gap? This number is only up a measly one percentage from 2014, and the change isn’t of any major significance. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the earnings ratio hasn’t had significant annual change since 2007. This gender wage gap has only narrowed since the 1970s and due largely to women’s progress in education and workforce participation and to men’s wages rising at a slower rate. Still, the pay gap does not appear likely to go away on its own. At the rate of change between 1960 and 2015, women are expected to reach pay equity with men in 2059. But even that slow progress has stalled in recent years. These

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Gender Pay Gap

    851 Words  | 2 Pages

    Contention: There is no such thing as a gender pay gap as any wage differences are due to occupational choices people make. " In 2015, women working full time in the United States typically were paid just 80 percent of what men were paid, a gap of 20 percent?" (Miller, 2016). This shocking statistic brought up the controversy discussion of the gender pay gap in the world and creates the idea of women being paid lesser than men.

    Read More

  • Gender Pay Gap Essay

    620 Words  | 2 Pages

    Demonstrate your understanding of the gender pay gap. The Gender Pay Gap is the average hourly earnings difference between men and women (Heery, Noon, 2008). Women's wages are still found to be lower than men's, even after controlling for differences in characteristics such as region, industry, personal life, education, work experience and occupation (Fabling et al, 2012). This pay gap can no longer be explained as education, type of work, and family responsibilities. This leaves 80 percent of the pay gap as ‘unexplained’ factors, which meants that here is still discrimination towards women in the workforce regarding behaviour, attitude, and unconscious bias ( Pacheco & Cochrane, 2017).

    Read More

  • Gender Pay Gap Essay

    725 Words  | 2 Pages

    Today in the United States, men make more than women in various sectors, including education and other trades favoring women workers. The gap gets bigger when comparing the wages earned by men to those of women in jobs favoring men workers such as construction or other physically demanding jobs. Women are less likely to work those jobs, therefor; men have the advantage of having more experience and get paid better. In addition, employers would rather hire a man instead of a woman because they believe that a man will be able to sustain the difficulty of the job and work longer hours which crate a disadvantage for women because they are unable to gain experience and become skilled in that certain field. Gender pay gap based on this information is explained as the result of the discrimination of employers toward the feminine sex in terms of pay, which discourage them to work certain jobs leading to create a bigger gap due to the lack of

    Read More

  • Gender Bias And The Workplace

    727 Words  | 2 Pages

    Despite government regulations to promote equality within the workplace, women’s salaries continue to lag behind males in similar career with similar experiences. According to research performed by Blau & Kahn (2007) “women salaries averaged about 60% of men’s until the 1970s and rose to nearly 80% by the 1990s” (as cited in Bendick, Jr. & Nunes, 2012, p.244). Today, women on average earn approximately $.81 for every dollar that men earn in the United States (Guy and Fenley P.41 2014).

    Read More

More about The Gender Wage Gap In The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

Open Document