Essay On Gender Pay Gap

“There is nowhere in the world where women’s wages are equal to those of men” (Off Our Backs 2003). In the United Kingdom, women make 27% less than men (Off Our Backs 2005). In Korea and Japan, men make over 30% more than women, meaning that for every dollar a man makes, a woman makes less than seventy cents (Rampbell). In Belgium, the gender wage gap is less than 10%, meaning a woman makes more than ninety cents for every dollar a man makes (Rampbell). In the United States, women make about seventy-five cents for every dollar a man makes; between men and women, there is a 23-25% gap in income. There is no denying that the gender wage gap exists, but many question whether we should attempt to close it. The gender wage gap should be closed because there is no logical reason why it should exist in the first place, as there are just as many qualified women out there as there are men, if not more, and because it exists due to the fact that women are discouraged from entering various career areas that oftentimes pay more. In the past, women were expected to stay at home,
clean, and rear the children. They weren’t allowed an advanced education; therefore, there were very few qualified women in the workforce. In today’s society, that simply isn’t the case. The amount of U.S. women enrolled in college, as well as graduating college, has rapidly increased since the days of yore. Women have outnumbered men in graduate programs since 1984 (Off Our Backs 2003). There are more qualified women in the United States than ever before, and that number is only growing. By 2019, women are projected to account for 60% of all college graduates (Brownworth). Since the amount of qualified female individuals is increasing, one would expect them to be paid more; however, this is not the case. Although the number of female college graduates is increasing, the types of careers they acquire remain static. While women acquired 60% of bachelor’s degrees overall, 20% or fewer of those were acquired in computer science, physics, and engineering (Welsh). Men typically get the jobs that pay the most because women are often either not encouraged or discouraged from entering those fields. One woman said, “I didn’t go on in physics because not a single professor- not even the adviser who supervised my senior thesis- encouraged me to go to graduate school” (Welsh). Some state that women simply aren’t as good as men in those fields, stating various statistics; however, studies have shown that women who expect to do worse than men will, and those who expect to perform equally well will (Welsh). If they are taught to feel inferior, they will become inferior. Even though women show no signs of being inherently inferior to men, they are treated as such, and therefore, that is what they become. There are some that disagree with closing the wage gap.
Some say that women’s search for equality has reached a plateau, that it can’t go any farther, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be good. Christina Hoff Summers stated, “if we continue on our present course, boys will, indeed, be tomorrow’s second sex” (Off Our Backs 2003). Although some hold this belief, the fact is, women still have a very long way to go before they reach that point. Part of achieving gender equality is closing the gender wage gap. It hasn’t even been a hundred years since women gained suffrage in the United States, and there is so much more left to achieve. Some believe that we shouldn’t bother closing the gender wage gap because in other countries there is an even greater disparity in gender equality. However, just because one thing isn’t as bad as another thing, it doesn’t mean that the first thing doesn’t need to be
fixed. In sum, all the evidence supports that we should close the gender wage gap. There are just as many qualified female individuals as there are male individuals in the workforce, but they are discouraged from entering various fields, which is what created the gender wage gap. Because of this system, more than half of all women workers make only a little over, or just under, minimum wage (Brownworth). Because it exists due to wrongdoing, it should be eliminated. It should be eliminated because women are equal to men, and the gender wage gap implies that they are not. Because it implies this, women every day feel inferior to men. The gender wage gap is a major obstacle to the realization of gender equality.