Blog Post 4
Lucy Thompson
PS101 – Jenkins
4/28/22
Blog Post 4
An issue that affects the female community is the gender pay gap. I feel as if I have heard this term in the news and in class and never knew what exactly that term meant. I used to think that the gender pay gap mean that a man and a woman that work at the exact same company doing the exact same job got paid differently. However, after doing more research I learned that it is a little more complex than that. The gender pay gap is the difference in wages earned between men and women, with men being paid substantially more. This has and can be calculated in several different ways. Bleiweis explains, “Analyzing the most recent Census Bureau data from 2018, women of all races earned, on average, just 82 cents for every $1 earned by men of all races” (Bleiweis “American Progress”). The issue is that women are earning less than men, not because they are not working, but I think there are several factors that can explain the cause of this. Some of these may be that women are not offered the same roles men are in the corporate world because female leaders are stigmatized. Our society views women as nurturing and emotional and struggles to see women as powerful and commanding as men are in leadership roles.
The gender pay gap affects women because they are the group that is earning less than men across all races. Women have gained more and more rights and recognition over the past 200 years. We have seen this with women gaining the right to vote in the early 1900s, women becoming more involved with the workforce during war times, more women seeking full-time employment and not being confined to household duties, and the sexual revolution for women with the creation of the birth control pill. Women have gained more and more rights and privileges that used to only be available to men. All this being said, women have proven themselves countless times to be just as valuable as men in our society. So why are women being paid less? The groups affected by the gender pay gap are women of all ages and races. The difference is 82 cents women make for every dollar men make. This may seem like a small difference of 18 cents, but that can really add up if you look at it in terms of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Women of all walks of life are affected because in today’s society it is rare for us to see women holding the same leadership roles that men hold, which leads to women experiencing the glass ceiling effect. Lockert explains the glass ceiling as, “The term ‘glass ceiling’ is a metaphor for the barriers that women and people of color face when striving to move upward in the workplace” (Lockert “Business Insider”). With this glass ceiling in the workplace and social norms pushing women towards managing a household, it is no wonder that women would be paid substantially less than men.
There are several different perspectives that can be taken on this issue. The first is women who would like to see the wage gap close, these women see the wage gap as an injustice to all women and see it as a societal issue that needs to change. They think women need to have the same job opportunities and economic opportunities as men. There are also women that do not care about the wage gap. This could be due to them not being in the workforce, not being educated extensively on what the wage gap is, or they are comfortable and want to take on the role of a household manager. There are men looking from the outside perspective that are against efforts to close the wage gap because they think it will lessen the number of job opportunities for them. And there are men that are in favor of closing the wage gap because they want women to have the same opportunities they have, and they appreciate the value female employees and colleagues bring to a company or team.
An evidence-based solution that I would offer up to solve the gender wage gap issue would start with society. We must start at the root of the problem in order to tackle the entire issue. If society can see that the gender wage gap causes many issues and has a profound effect on women, then I think more companies would strive to hire women. If there could somehow be a national movement that gains substantial media attention in favor of closing the wage gap, I think that would help. We have seen this to be effective with the “Me Too” movement. I also think it could be solved through legislation. This could look like a requirement by law that companies must have a certain number of women employed or they could be required to interview a certain number of women for positions per year. The latter solution I think would be more difficult to implement.
Sources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/glass-ceiling
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/quick-facts-gender-wage-gap/