INDIVIDUAL WRITEUP
Even though we are claiming that we are leaving in a free world where everyone has equal rights, there are still some forms of injustice that are done to women especially as far as employment and pay is concerned. Up to date, women pay still lags behind and what they are paid now on average could be equal to what men were paid over 10 years ago . There have been numerous efforts done so as to ensure that women get equal pay with their male counterparts and the question that many are asking today is – is it time that women get equal pay as their male counterpart?
Article 1:
Godfrey, N. (2016, January 24). Congrats To Women. In A Hundred Years, You Will Finally Have Equal Pay. Retrieved from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/nealegodfrey/2016/01/24/congrats-to-women-in-a-hundred-years-you-will-finally-have-equal-pay/#49299d905a19
The article estimates that women will have to wait nearly over 118 years for them to expect to get equal pay as their male counterparts. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, the pay penalty of women cannot be said to have improved in any significant manner. The reason given for this fact is simply because even though the political and business policies are improving, many employers still handle women from their perspective that role and stereotypes are generally as caregivers at home and looking after children while men are the breadwinners.
Statistics shows that the average full time salary for women is around $11,000 a year while that of men is estimated to be around $20,000. Putting inflation into the picture, the situation is even made worse where the men are earning as twice as much as women. But with that being said, there are countries where the wage parity is equal and women are receiving the same pay as the men with most of them being drawn from Africa countries such as Rwanda and Tanzania.
But in defense of the figures and the reasons as to why women always earn less than men, is the tendency of the women often working in low paying fields in the public sector as well as them choosing caring professions in plenty and with those that choose to do part time jobs also tend to work in low paying sectors. But putting that in mind also there still exists disparity between the rates of pay for the same work and the men always seem to get a little more than women even for the same amount of work.
Today also women are being empowered and in over 97 countries, women are joining colleges in high numbers as compared to their male counterparts. But this did not necessarily translate into advancement into the work place with only majority of women being part of the skilled labor in only 68 countries. In most countries and companies, women are less likely to receive workplace training as compared to men and are with no doubt the last category to be considered as far as pay rise is concerned. In most countries many of those who earn less than the living age line are always drawn from the women population.
But all is yet to be lost, with the new trend in picture, women can be encouraged that in over ten years their efforts will be recognized and they will be earning the same as their male counter parts. Women are encouraged to put up with the men and fight for top positions as well as joining the private sector so as to compete competitively with their male counterparts. And in over that 118 years, their efforts will be recognized and appreciated.
Article 2
Worstall, T. (2015, November 28). How To Solve The Gender Pay Gap Once And For All. Retrieved from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/11/28/how-to-solve-the-gender-pay-gap-once-and-for-all/#d5b26175b3ea
In this article, the author of the article suggests that the reasons for the pay disparity among men and women is due to parenting and not gender itself as many suggest. He quotes evidence that in the present society fathers always earn more than non-fathers and among the women, mothers always earn more than non-mothers. He suggests that the never married childless women always earn even way more than the average man keeping in mind that there exist almost no gender pay gap at all in the years before one reaches the position of having his/her first child. Combining all those aspects together we are left with one conclusion and that is that it is when children come into the picture that we begin to see the issue of pay gap and not due to gender.
Many argue that the belief is very delusional but the author argues otherwise. The author quotes the number of ways that are given so as to eliminate the gender age gap and argues that number of ways given are just the same thing. The author is trying to argue out that almost all of them seem to rotate around family and children care. There is just a picture of wage and taking care of children.
Sometimes ago women jobs that were respectable were teaching and nursing but today that is not the case anymore as job segregation has effectively taken place in the current society. The reasons for job segregation varies but are always dependent on why we think it even occurs in the first place. We cannot force the women to do jobs such as engineering and other jobs that are men oriented the same way we cannot force men to do women-oriented jobs such as being mid wives. Everyone has a choice to choose the jobs they want to venture it but it is also being subjected to other factors such as level education and other variables. But at the end of the day it always comes down to one factor that women always do more job in child rearing than men. Understanding this fact will provide the solution that exists for gender pay gap. We need to have a paradigm shift in societal expectation about child rearing and it is only then that we will be tackling the question of gender pay gap from the right channel.
Article 3:
Adams, S. (2015, March 26). New Data On Just How Bad The Gender Pay Gap Is. Retrieved from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2015/03/26/new-data-on-just-how-bad-the-gender-pay-gap-is/#148209ba1ad9
The article tries to look at past studies in relation to gender pay parity and how the situation is at present moment and how it could be in the near future. There is an interesting study that indicated that women earnings will never reach to that level of men earnings up to 144 years in the future. Some studies even suggests that gender pay parity will end in 2106. The above arrived numbers were reached upon when researchers used census data as well as past rates of women’s age increases to predict the future pattern. The rate of progress is limited to many factors such as, race and educational level among many other factors.
The study showed that women drawn from the east coast were earning more than their male counterparts with New York City among all cities having the smallest gender wage gap. In New York, every $1 that a man earned women were earning up to $87.6 cents. Women from Florida were given hope as they were meant to understand that they will reach equal pay in as early as 2038 earlier than other women in any city in the USA.
As far as ethnicity and gender pay disparity is concerned, the situation is worse among the Hispanics women who earn less than 53.8% what their male counter parts are earning. This situation is not only depressing but surprising at the same time as more women than men are now enrolling in colleges and higher level of education institutions. But whenever you take a look at education levels, the greatest wage gap is drawn from people who have higher levels of education. The sad situation can be seen from the statistic that graduated women always earn 69.1% while their graduate male counterparts always earn something above 71.4% in salaries. Clearly, this data points to a fact that women always need more educational qualifications than their male counterparts so as to secure jobs that are highly paying. But on a positive note also from the article is the point that men’s salaries have stagnated for the last 30 years, women’s wages salaries have been rising quite significantly. This serves to give hope to the women that as far as they keep putting more effort to reach equality as far as payment is concerned their efforts would one day materialize. With this new trend, one could easily assume that the gap would be a little smaller in that one out of every 3 women is manager as compared to one out of 4 men. That is not the situation as gender pay parity is still a reality in the present day society.
The issue of men also making significantly more than their female counterparts in the same jobs is also present in the society. Out of 290,000 registered nurses, male nurses made over $6000 a year more than their female counterparts. The situation is saddening and limits the quest for the end of the gender pay parity. The reasons as to why the differences in pay and why it exists could not be explained from the article as it leaves the reader with more questions than answers. The article also suggests that it known that women always have a tougher time in trying to get a pay rise and that could explain why employees drawn from the same job could earn different figures with the male salaries being quite a little higher than that of the women counterparts. Again, men always tend to seek part time jobs as compared to women and that could explain why employees for the same job professional could earn different figures. Women oftentimes also take a lot of time off to take care of their families while the men are at work making money explaining also the reason for the disparity. But with all being said, the reason for the wide gender gap is still alarming and something should be done really quickly to amend the situation
Clearly, from the above three articles, the issue of gender pay parity is an eminent problem and the situation is not likely to be solved any time soon. Despite all efforts being taken to ensure that women are taking home the same amount as their male counterparts, the situation is making slow progress. We are living in a world where we assume that equality applies in all sectors but that is not true as it can be seen in this case of gender pay parity. But may be the reasons that we give for gender pay parity are not the right ones and we need to change our thinking if we need to change the situation sooner than later. Family and children are the ones that contribute a lot to gender parity. Before individual marry and have children, there always seems to exist no parity in earning between the male and the female counterparts. But whenever children appear in the picture, then gender pay parity becomes a problem.
But women are encouraged not to despair, even though many studies shows that they will arrive at their desired goals in over 100 years from now, equality in payment will one day become and eminent realization. To do that they need to keep on enrolling in colleges and advancing their education as far as they can. This way they will be in a good position to competent with their male counterparts and receive huge salaries even way better than their male counter parts. They should also engage in private sectors and start their own business and with time they will achieve their goals.
There has been a significant wage gap between the male and female where women have suffered the discrimination. Women have been on the upper side of the scale when it came to the quantity of their pay and there are a number of factors that have contributed to this. The wage gap is affected by a number of factors which need to be addressed and put into law. This is because the wage gap tends to affect the female gender which is a discriminatory trait.
There are various factors that contribute to the widening of the wage gap. There is education, there is location, race, type of job and other factors. It means that either women have less of these traits or they are distinguished due to other responsibilities or rather it is a discriminatory trait. The main questions revolve around gender and what the governments are doing to reduce this gap. An example is the wage gap affected by education, does it mean that women are not educated to handle jobs or are men so superior that they have to be paid higher wages to women.
Another prompting notion is that women may not have the expertise to handle jobs like men do or is it measured according to how hard they work? These are important foundations to base research and find statistics so that it can be understood as to why women are segregated in the wage gap that tends to mistreat them. Statistics that were released recently show that women received wages that amounted to 79 percent of what their male counterparts earned. The gap is contributed due to education in which women have progressed and an increase in the number of women in professions.
Women of color are the most discriminated upon when it comes to pay and the significant gap. There is a difference in the Hispanic, African American among others. The difference comes with individual situation and the comparison is done with the non-Hispanic white. It is also lower with Asian American women, meaning that the gender gap pay disparity among women is also affected majorly by the skin color.
Age and education are other factors that tend to determine the wage gap. It is determined that earnings in the U.S tend to increase as the age increases. This has also tended to affect the wage gap where women are discriminated in this category. The gap between old workers’ pay is large as compared to the male workers. It is determined that women earn close to 90 percent which significantly changes as they come to the age of 35. The wages for the women depreciate from this stage to affect the women disparately. Education determines the amount of pay where as it increases, payment also increases. This is affected by the achievement of more education between men and women. The education notion does not seem to help when it comes to gender pay gap. The gender pay gap is higher at higher educational levels making it hard to correct the situation.
The wage gap can therefore be reduced by a number of involvement from different stakeholders. There is need to have salary audits that can help to find out the various problems that bring the disparity and monitor as well as cover the gap. Women are encouraged to come up with strategies and policies that can help them set the pay negotiations and policies to ensure that the wages are paid on an equal measure. There is also need to pay attention to the paycheck fairness act. This is supposed to help the policy makers to reduce the gap experienced in this situation. This way, women will enjoy the benefits working equally as men.
References
Adams, S. (2015, March 26). New Data On Just How Bad The Gender Pay Gap Is. Retrieved from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2015/03/26/new-data-on-just-how-bad-the-gender-pay-gap-is/#148209ba1ad9
Godfrey, N. (2016, January 24). Congrats To Women. In A Hundred Years, You Will Finally Have Equal Pay. Retrieved from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/nealegodfrey/2016/01/24/congrats-to-women-in-a-hundred-years-you-will-finally-have-equal-pay/#49299d905a19
Hill, C. (2015). The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap (Fall 2015). Economic Justice.
Worstall, T. (2015, November 28). How To Solve The Gender Pay Gap Once And For All. Retrieved from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/11/28/how-to-solve-the-gender-pay-gap-once-and-for-all/#d5b26175b3ea
