Gender Pay Gap
Period 7 Dig Lit, January 6th, 2016
By: Isabelle Prager
What is the Gender Pay Gap?
Let's say that a man and woman do the same exact job, but the woman gets paid less than the man even though she should be paid equal to the man. This loss of money for the woman is called the gender pay gap. Not a single country has closed this gap completely, which means that every single women in the world is not paid an equal wage to a man who does equal work to her. This is all caused by the employers and a little bit of the government, the government refuses to pass laws that say women can earn equal wage of a man, the employers say that they are saving money and this is actually a false statement. This is the gender pay gap and it has existed since women could work.
A Lot of People don't plan on closing the Gap
The United States is really not planning on closing the gap any time soon. For the past decade the gap has only closed by a wimpy 7%, we can do better than that! Some people aren't looking to improve, they said that 21% is to small to worry about, so when researchers asked them if they would give up 21% of their salaries they of course said no. Wyoming said that they aren't planning the gap until 2159, that is a long time and I think that they could close the gap sooner if they really tried hard. Wyoming isn't even the state that is falling behind the farthest. We have room to improve, we are just to scared.
The Facts Behind the Gap in the United States
In 1965 women in the United states earned only 67% of men, and it is jaw-dropping to think that in the past 51 years we have only managed to close the gap 12%. The percentage a women is paid compared to her male counterpart varies depending on age, race, level of education, etc. Women who have children or are at that age tend to earn less, because the company doesn't want to have to deal with the women taking maternity leave. Younger women are fresh from school and are less likely to have offspring, so they are typically paid around 88% of their male counterparts. On average United States women earn 79% of their male counterparts.
A male gender pay gap researcher says,"Because women account for one-half of a country's potential talent base, a nations competitiveness in the long term depends significantly on whether and how it educates and utilizes its women." I agree with this man on how the country can only ever improve by using its women and listening to their thought and opinions. I also think that a lot of women feel useless, and become stay at home moms, this only makes are economic system decrease and unlike not paying them as much as men and hoping it saves them money.