By now, you’ve probably all heard, or perhaps participated
in the Women’s March that occurred right after the inauguration on January 21st.
Over 5 million people participated in cities around the world to let their
voices be heard on a variety of issues - immigration, LGBTQ rights, the
treatment of minorities, environmental causes, and of course, women’s rights. The
organizers of the Women’s March have now started an action program to help
people figure out how they can continue to take action. You can learn more about the March and how
you can let your voice be heard on any of these issues here: https://www.womensmarch.com/100/action2/
I’m a big supporter of women’s rights and the fight for
equality that is still going on. I had
every intention of marching – my signs we ready, my t-shirt was bought – but unfortunately,
I became ill and was too sick to attend.
I was bummed – but I was proud of my fellow sisters (and brothers!) who
marched for equality and I was with them in spirit. You may be thinking that in 2017 women
already have equality, but you’d be wrong. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that
women couldn’t do a lot of things. Check
out this video I recently found on social media for a shocking list! https://www.facebook.com/omgfactsofficial/videos/10154697216211495/
In a few weeks, we will discuss equality in class and look
at some of the ways that women still lag behind in men in terms of rights,
particularly when it comes to equal pay for equal work. Artists and designers aren’t immune from it either.
According to a report by the National Endowment for the Arts, “women are making
enormous progress, but still lag behind their male colleagues economically,
especially in fields such as photography, design and architecture. The pay gap
tends to be larger for non-performing art occupations, when women earn just 72%
of what men earn. To put that into perspective, in 2005 the average income of
women artists was $27,000 which was $14,700 less than the average income of men
artists!
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women are 60%
more likely than men to earn a bachelor’s degree by the time they are
twenty-three. We are more educated and working more than ever before, yet the
disparity between pay is still there. So, my question to you this week is “Why
do you think this gap exists, and what do you think we could do to change it?” Answers are due no later than Wednesday,
February 8th, 2017.
I would say that gender gaps still exist in 2017 because men are simply intimidated by women. They do not like the thought of a female doing the same job or task as them & getting paid equally because women "are supposed to be weak, frail, and lesser than them overall". There is no actual explanation as to why men think this way other than blatant sexism. It's easy to undermine and undervalue a woman's work because (old) society tells us that women are meant to be child-bearers and homemakers, nothing more.
ReplyDeleteIf we want to change it, we, as women, need to step up, take matters into our own hands, & use our voices EVEN MORE. We should demand equal pay for equal jobs and not take no for an answer. To do so, we can either talk directly to people who are in charge of wages at our workplace or we can write to our representatives and convince them to put more muscle into laws that protect against gender discrimination. We've already proven that we are worthy and capable, so that really is the only thing left to do.
I feel like there is a gender gap because a majority of people in higher positions of authority in many businesses are old and still believe that women belong at home with children. I honestly don't think I'm capable of taking care of children. But that's just part of it. Men are afraid of us because we are different from them, but not completely different. Men just want to be dominant and they see women as inferior. As a woman who just took multiple personality tests in other classes, I prefer to be dominant as well. Men and women have many differences, but we are all the same: human. We should be treated as equals. I feel like we need to break down stereotypes about men and women in order to find that we do have a lot of similarities. Also women need to speak up more instead of sitting on the side lines.
ReplyDeleteCharles Springman - Through research, and discussions in my sociology class, I have come to the conclusion that the reason that we have a gender pay gap is because "typically," women chose jobs like elementary teachers and day care caretakers, etc. They reason they are I these jobs is because "Typically" Men don't wont jobs like that. They don't have the nurturing "Instincts that women tend to have with children. This is a result that women have more of a connection to children since women are the ones who birth the children not the men. But I'm also not saying that men don't have the capability to be nurturing I'm just saying men don't tend to embrace it as much. As far as fixing the Gender gap I'm not exactly sure how to.
ReplyDeleteIt all started from way back then I think. How at first women wasn't able to vote and eventually that changed. Now I think that women should be treated the same and also get paid the same as men because I don't think that they do. But when it comes to changing it I really don't know right now other than all men and women wanted this to change.
ReplyDeleteI think this wage gap exists because many companies today are older than we think and possibly ran by older CEO's. These older business owners may rely on their old beliefs and philosophies such as (apparently) paying women less. While great strides towards wage and gender equality have been made, there should be even more activism and action put forth that make a bigger impact. In time, I believe this equality will be achieved.
ReplyDeleteThis is Kaeli Villarreal
ReplyDeleteI can't say for sure a specific reason as to why there's a gap, but I can say for sure that there are plenty of women out there determined to exceed their expectations. Women have always been viewed as delicate and have gotten more rules pushed onto them because of "their nature." Maybe there are just people out there who are stubborn about gender roles and would rather have their old ways. It's pretty ridiculous that these many gaps still exist, yet so many people are proving those gaps wrong. I'm not sure how we can exactly change these behaviors in a quick way, awareness is always a good option; it always takes time for these things to happen.
I believe this wage gap exists due to the fact that men need to feel superior in some way, shape, or form. Until we can simply get over ourselves and get pride out of the way, there will always be a wage gap. until we can all come together and realize that we are all equal human beings, nothing is going to change. Change doesn't come from sitting and letting the same occurrences happen over and over again. Change comes from action. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I believe America may need a visit to the funny farm.
ReplyDeleteI believe the gender gap still exist because men and companies expect women to get pregnant and take maturity leave from work. Men still want to be superiors over women, and be the providers for the families and make the women stay at home, and not work. But women in 2017, are working more than ever. Women do not stay at home for their full maturity leave because they have to get back to work and provide. Women deserve the same pay if they are doing the exact same job maybe even better than the man sitting right next to her. I believe the world is not ready for women to paid equally, strong and independent. They want us to be weak, not as smart, and only provide babies. Women are just as smart or even smarter than men. We deserve equal pay!
ReplyDelete“Why do you think this gap exists, and what do you think we could do to change it?”
ReplyDeleteSimple answer is sexism that still exists within our society as a whole. Men think of women as inferior in many ways, and this is channeled into the gender gap and obvious inequal pay. No matter how much men deny it, women still make less than them for no reason besides them being women.
The only way one could change such a thing is enforcing equal pay laws on businesses, with consequences that will give the owners more than just a simple slap on the wrist. There needs to be a sizable feministic upheaval in the system if we want to truly make a difference in the obviously sexism-fueled wage gap.
If you were to get on any social site and start the conversation over wag gaps you will get arguments from people who claim they do not exist. I believe this is one of the reasons there still is a wag gap in our country and other countries. Too many people refuse to acknowledge the fact that there is indeed a wag gap, no matter what facts you show them and the ones who try and fight for the wag gaps are being shut down. They are labeled as feminazis because apparently being a feminist is a bad thing. It is always hard to fight for what you want and what you believe in when people are shutting you down at every turn. Also, as other people have stated, i believe another reason for the wag gap is top men of industries and businesses are stuck in their old ways of when women barely had rights or say so in what happened to them or in their jobs. Teaching an old dog new tricks may be possible but does not mean it is easy. How to go about changing the wag gap, i am not entirely sure. Hopefully this new Women's movement will shed some light on the subject.
ReplyDeleteIm not really sure, but i think that men think they should be on a higher rank then women. That means getting paid more. Gender should have nothing to do with the pay gap, but however whoever has more experience/education should be increased in the workplace. Which demands a higher pay, regardless of the gender.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading several articles about this issue, I feel that there are several men who institute "old school" rules from decades before. Some men feel threatened or even embarrassed when they earn less than a woman does. Is this right? No. Should something be done about it? Yes.
ReplyDeleteI personally believe that equal rights for men and woman should be more prominent in this world than what exists today.
Other research indicates that if a woman works her butt off her whole life to achieve her career goals by earning a degree and becoming great at what she does. However, she's met with a level of unfair pay due to all she's been through. I believe the system of pay should be looked at more carefully.
I think its just something that was established way back when and no one has bothered to change it. Probably because its just too much of a hassle for them and politicians aren't concerned for women in general.
ReplyDeleteI think the gap between the income of men and women started back to the founding fathers. Since they were all men I think the American people held to that and started to make the image of men look superior then women, making a difference an income.
ReplyDeleteI believe this gap exists for the same reason that the LGBTQ still faces scrutiny and mistreatment. We live in a time where a very conservative (not just politically) generation that believes in traditional gender roles is still in power. On the other hand, we have a very large and liberal (once again, not just politically) younger generation that believes in almost the complete opposite. This generational, ideological clash is very intense and nearly global. I believe once the younger, more open minded generation's attitude reflects our nations policies, we will then start to see issues such as the wage gap resolved.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion the gap between men and women is a long standing issue that has lasted for millennia. While in ancient times this may have been beneficial as the males were physically stronger and the females provided offspring, in the modern era these roles aren't required but the dominance still persists through our socio-economic society. There is no easy way to fix this problem, but teaching tolerance towards all people and removing gender stereotypes from all points of lives would do a great deal to close the gap.
ReplyDeleteThe gap is something that's been there for years. The reasoning behind it I don't understand, girls get the short end of the stick. Our tampons and pads are taxed,bras are hella expensive. I own one bra that actually fits and is comfortable it cost like 20 bucks. So not only do we have to deal with gap change we have to deal with taxes on necessarily. -Gaetes
ReplyDeleteI think it is because the U.S. is stuck in some old ways of living. It has always seem like the US is the perfect place for rich white males and I personally think that it is a power thing. There should be no gap because we are all the same but it is in the system of how things are ran here.
ReplyDeleteOne the methodologies often chosen by those who wish diminish your freedom and individualism is to set you at odds against others. In this case, gender is to be the separating factor. According to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 SEC. 206 Section 6 prohibits the discrimination based on sex, furthermore section 6 paragraph 1 prohibits discrimination on account of sex in the payment of wages. So if we take a given that a wage gap is illegal, is it a wage gap or an earnings gap? The premise of a wage gap is by very definition is flawed or not adhered to thereof. Its not a wage gap because that is illegal, but an earning gap. What would be the factors behind women earning less?
ReplyDeleteThe gap comes from a statistical average of the earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not take account for the difference in occupation, positions, education, job tenure, time-off, earning outliers, or hours worked per week. Now there are exceptions, but most workplace pay gaps narrow to the point of vanishing when one accounts for all relevant factors. If you throw out the illegalities and take it to the extreme, wouldn’t more places hire women (and fire all the men) for market advantage if women truly got paid less if you consider only the bottom line? There must be a reason for the wage gap right? We also see that the more choices women have the higher the gap becomes, not narrowing. Lets look deeper into this. When you look deeper into the 23-cent gender pay gap you may find it so misleading as to border on outright falsehood
Women are paid 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed on Jan, 29th 2009 as the first piece of legislation from the Obama Administration to address unfair and unacceptable wage gap after this stat became “common knowledge”. Two laws now for the same issue, taken care of right? Let’s look at where this statistic comes from. In examining the information collected by the 2009 United States Current Population Survey, which is conducted for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, researchers found that, in total sample, women, on average, earned $36,278 compared to $47,127 for men – a 23% gap. This figure had remained essentially unchanged since 2007 and 2008. This 23 percent gap is calculated by averaging the annual earnings (again not wage mind you) of all men and comparing that number to the average annual earning of all women – no additional variables were controlled for. Bam, this is totally an example of sexism in the workplace! Right? Before we jump to that conclusion, I think it would be instructive to highlight another finding of the 2009 BLS survey. People aged 55 to 64 make nearly twice as much as 20 to 24 year olds. Is this evident for ageism – discrimination based on age – or simply an effect of the gap in experience and career progression? If we take in mind that it could be the later, could there also be some factor(s) that we are overlooking? Just looking at crude statistics can be deceptive in their capacity to wash away important details, so lets’ break the male and female earnings down to more narrow categories. (due to character limit this will be continued as another comment)
When it comes to weekly earning by marital status (2009) married men make $938 per week and married women make $708 dollars per week. Non-married women make $577 dollars per week and non-married men make $608 per week. It really crushes down the income disparity to first of all segregate between married and unmarried. In the 1950s, there was a less than 2% pay gap between married women and men- and never married women between 45 and 54 earned 106% of what their never-married male counterparts made. And those times were the worst for women right? Marital status is important in that your expenses increase and so does your time commitment to things outside of the workplace. Could that account for the disparity of earning in married women and men compared to non-married? Taking even that into consideration, those married are earning more than non-married. (Including the added stress, time-commitment burdens, and high rate of dropping down to part-time to fulfill other non-work obligations). (On a side note, we are one of the few countries that don’t allow parents time outside of the workplace to be parents anymore) The factors for weekly earnings by marital status is not just sexism by employers, but more so choices made by married couple vs the unmarried.
ReplyDeleteOccupations. Now this is the biggest one of them all that accounts for the gap. You can get really detailed in the breakdown, but the more you break it down the more the disparity. On average, jobs related to architecture, computer/technology, engineering, aka STEM fields that basically pay 36 percent more than jobs in education and healthcare. High paying fields outside of healthcare and education pay over twice the earnings. Chief executive officers’ (CEO, CFO, EXO, ect.) weekly income is the big outlier that skews the averages as well. Roughly, 74% of healthcare jobs are women, 73% are education by the 2009 numbers. CEO is 25% female 75% male. Architecture and Engineering 12% females. Computers, Mathematics, Sciences 24% female compared the majority male. There has been an initiative to change this and I’ll look into more updated detailed numbers if someone really wants me to. Now there are some indications backed by statistical empirical evidence, that overall, in general women have a slight preference for people rather than with things. This has an effect on their choices of careers. There have also been studies that show that when women have more economic opportunities they tend to gravitate more towards people-friendly, people oriented, or people-engaged fields which have lower salaries. In higher education, such as doctoral and master degrees, we see roughly the same percentages in education and healthcare compared to STEM fields in women and men. There is also disparity breakdown that isn’t talked about in occupations such as manual labor jobs. For instance, men make up 80% of truck drivers (local) 95% long haul, 95% heavy equipment operators, 90% in union construction/industrial, 99% in oil (drilling, deckhands, oilfield, processing) 60% in food processing, 90% in fishing (boat and plant), and 84.9% of military. (BLS 2014, MOSreport). Men also make up 93% of deaths on the job, 81% on-the-job suicide rate, and overall lower life expectancy. Women occupation choices are getting paid less, but they are also taking less risk. That is not factored into the gap. (continued)
Work hours by number of workers and weekly earnings show start to show a wider gap. It is important when you want to look at people’s incomes from earnings. Women earn 4% more than men in the 1-34 work-hour range (part-time). On average, people who work 41 hours or more earn 5 times more than those who work between 1 and 34 hours. Men earn 16% more than women in the 41-and over work-hour range. In the US, the Fair Labor Standards Act requires employees to be paid 1.5 times their regular pay if they work over 40 hours a week. This has a significant impact on the gap. Overall, of the number of workers by work hours, 12% of men and 25% of women work part-time jobs (1-34hrs). Furthermore, 22% of men work overtime (40+ hours) compared to 11% of women. Once again, significant impact on gap inequality when taken together as an average. There a multitude of complex (and not-so-complex) reasons in life why people choose to work certain number of work hours, but given how these choices are being made the people making more are, well, working more. This once again skews the average by not looking at the factors, variables, and nuances. Just those three factors, marital status, occupation, and work hours, some have estimated make up 78% of the gap.
ReplyDeleteThere are life choices that people make. You must take into account people’s proclivities and prerogatives, the how, what, and why. There is always inequality to be found but we must take into account the reasons for why and how to gain understanding so we can work on true solutions. If we only get biased or narrative view from reiterated memed sayings we will always be playing wack-a-mole with imaginary devils. Even worst is if we use the ever-increasing weight of the hammer of state much to the detriment of our personal freedom and future freedom.
Of their free and own violations women are choosing to go into more ‘nurturing’ occupations and spend less time measuring life by those occupations. If we want to close the pay gap, I’d recommend re-evaluation of what we prioritize as ‘high-paying jobs or important use of time. What are we incentivizing and prioritizing as a society? What is more prudent? Are we measuring our time by our worth intrinsically or monetarily? What types of time-commitments are there between the genders when it comes to life? What are their proclivities and prerogatives? How are we valuing those choices? Perhaps in the pursuit of happiness, men and women take somewhat different paths. That is a cultural and societal issue. Saying its sexism is seems too simplistic hastily concluded reaction serving to negate the holistic view and the interstices of the issue.
Sources
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oqyrflOQFc (Recommended as a good follow-up after reading this)
http://download.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2014-Demographics-Report.pdf
https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/epa.cfm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayILjfYs7xw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRfERVPq2VE
http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/the-gender-wage-gap-2009
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswom2009.pdf
http://www.aei.org/publication/women-earned-majority-of-doctoral-degrees-in-2012-for-4th-straight-year-and-outnumber-men-in-grad-school-141-to-100/
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/overtime
In my opinion the gaps exists because men in charge of the system won't accept that women are better than them, but that's none of my business. *sips tea* I guess we could stop it by treating everyone as equal human beings, but we all know that's not gonna happen.
ReplyDelete