Gender and the wage gap in society

*This can be misconstrued as offensive, but I feel strongly against this wage gap, and this perfectly demonstrates the terrible opinion we see many have in society.

In today's society, gender equality is progressing faster than it has in the past. Although, one problem still divides the genders significantly. This problem is the wage gap between men and women in the same professions. It is projected that this women make 78 cents to every dollar made by men. This is a giant obstacle in the path to gender equality, and until it is remedied, women will continued to be dominated by men in an economic sense. It is despicable that a gender is payed less than the other when they do amount of work. The worst part is that many still don't believe that the wage gap exists, and that leads to many largely ignoring the fact that it exists.

So why does this gap exist? Some say it is because we still have left over sexism in the workplace from the 50's and 60's. Some say it is because women tend to be the ones to leave the workplace to raise children so that denies them that time's wages and experience. Others say it is because women go into different professions that just naturally pay less than some male dominated ones. An article titled “Explaining the Gender Wage Gap” posted on www.americanprogress.org states “One of the largest driving factors of the gender wage gap is the fact that men and women, on average, work in different industries and occupations; this accounts for up to 49.3 percent of the wage gap, according to some estimates”. This makes sense, as we see women typically work “pink-collar jobs” such as nurses and teachers. This is not an excuse though, as we see women being paid less than men in these jobs as well. The argument could be made that women should try to branch out and establish more influence in jobs dominated by men, but they can face societal constraints while attempting to do this. The same article also said “But in reality, there are several factors that lead women to traditionally female-dominated roles, including the gendered socialization that trains girls from childhood to embody the sorts of traits that translate well into traditionally feminine jobs centered on nurturing, service, and supporting other people in their jobs”. As stated above, we see this in “pink collar jobs”. This really should not matter though.

Another argument for why the wage gap exists is because of women who have raised/are raising children. This is because some have the notion that mothers will be less dedicated to their jobs because they will be distracted with their children. At the same time, we see males getting pay raises when becoming fathers because males are perceived as the primary bread earners in society. This is an outdated notion and just perpetuates this pay inequality.

So how do we fix this problem? The most obvious option is to end the stigma behind women entering male dominated professions, such as many science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. Another obvious solution is to increase childcare support for working mothers. An article titled “How to Close the Gender Gap in Just Seven Easy Steps” posted on thenation.com states that “In fact, workers’ careers—mostly women’s—are often disrupted by a failure to get childcare, but a continuous work history is correlated with higher pay and better benefits”. This inability for affordable childcare leads to women needing to leave work (and lose those wages and experience) and that contributes to this unequal gap in wealth. If more affordable health care was available, we would definitely see improvement.

This pay gap doesn't need to exist. If we as a society could work together in the name of wage equality, it would be extremely easy to get rid of this pay gap in gender. There is quite a bit of research dedicated to fixing this problem, and it is available for us to use when we finally decide enough is enough.

Further Reading:
Explaining the Gender Wage Gap
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2014/05/19/90039/explaining-the-gender-wage-gap/
How to Close the Gender Gap in Just Seven Easy Steps
http://www.thenation.com/blog/167423/how-close-gender-wage-gap-just-seven-easy-steps