Closing The Gender Pay Gap

“Women have to work twice as hard as men to be considered on the same level.’’-Harriet Morgan. This has been a motto for women throughout history, which have been condemned to earning twenty-one cents to every dollar a man earns. The wage gap between genders was and is still a problem around the globe. The process to fix this broken system may take an estimate of 118 years, but there are things being implemented to rectify the wage gap, such as, raise of the minimum wage, paid sick days and pay transparency (Grimley). The Center for American Progress recently released a report called 7 Actions that Could Shrink the Gender Wage Gap it states, “While nearly two-thirds of mothers are breadwinners or co-breadwinners for their families, women made
up approximately two-thirds of all minimum-wage workers in 2012.” This means that two-thirds of women bring home the bacon or bread to support their families as the breadwinner (Grimley) .For example, single mothers are responsible for supporting a household on their shoulders, which contain about one or more children. The single mothers make up a major portion of the workforce. However, these women are struggling to make ends meet, while men that are self-supporting will take home more money than a single mother. Moreover they may be working the same job but the women always get pay twenty-cents less than men (Morath). By the increase of the federal minimum wage will bring balance to this bias patriarchy system, which will provide financial equality for all women across the globe. Now on the global scale, many countries such as Iceland, Norway, and Finland are doing a variety of things to close this wage gap.
According to the article on Gender pay gap- “They have the best policies in the world for families, Their childcare systems are the best and they have the best laws on paternity, maternity and family leave.’’ These countries child care systems are helping to close the wage gap because a plethora of women in the workforce are mothers’ of one or more children. Although, some countries like Egypt, Mail, and Lebanon are still trying to hold women back from finally hitting that glass ceiling, which means that they are trying to prevent women from reaching higher- level positions than men. These countries differ from the countries in Africa, including: Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Burundi because many of the parliamentarians and members of the labor force in Africa are women. A plethora of the these countries is doing more than the United States to close the wage gap, which may lead you to ponder whether are or not government is doing everything in its power to rectify this unbalanced pay deficiency? The United States should lead of the Nordic countries that have the laws in regards to paternity or maternity that are assisting in the afford to close the wage gap. For instance, if you live in Sweden and just had a child they will let you take a paid leave of absence for about one year per child for both father and mother. Yet maternity leave is a
different matter because countries by the hand full find that they should not give a paid maternity leave. Most women that are part of the workforce have kids or are going to.
Many of these women are that being reprimanded or fired for missing work for medical leave of absence because their child is ill or Aunt Flo came around unexpectedly. However, these situations may occur have occurred majored of employers will not grant a paid sick day, so some employees that must take a sick day off will be receiving nothing but empty pockets for there on the day off. Also day without pay will be stressful for those who live paycheck to paycheck. The more jobs that offered to pay sick days is beneficial to closing the wage gap, due to the fact, that a majority of women have children that will eventually get sick and so will the mothers themselves. Another tool to diminish the wage gap between genders is pay transparency, which aid women to find out if they are less than their male counterparts for doing the same jobs. This will reduce pay discrimination against females in the workplace, also enforce an equal pay for all
genders. Women like Harriet Morgan that had professional careers would be turning in their graves, if they only knew that even in this day of technology that is another 118 years to the wage gap between genders. That the process is tedious, but there are a variety of laws that being executed to repair this patriarchal system, such as, raise of the minimum wage, paid sick days and pay transparency. A celebrate for women across the globe is national women’s day, which is held on March 8. The perfect gift for women everywhere would be to finally have to equal pay for all women, wouldn’t it be?