Summary Of Fighting The Gender Pay Gap

The general argument made by Carl Richards in his work, “Fighting the Gender Pay Gap” is that some factors that affects gender pay gaps are the fact that there is bias, not enough awareness, and no real consequences for those companies not willing to change. More specifically, Richards argues that many companies aren’t willing to change and help decrease the gender pay gap. He states, “There’s no real consequence if they don’t” (Paragraph 4).Richards is suggesting that companies are unwilling to change, unless a law is put into place demanding the change to occur. Companies don’t see anything wrong with a gender pay gap because they aren’t penalized or punished for there being one. Furthermore, Richards argues that there isn’t enough awareness about a conflict in gender pay gap.
More specifically, Richards argues that we were raised in a society that asking about what others earn is seen as impolite and looked down upon.
Many companies “even threaten termination if employees reveal salary” so people tend to keep quiet because they want to keep their jobs (Paragraph 5). Since people don’t talk about what he/she earns, sometimes no one knows about the gender pay gap even existing. He states, “it means admitting we might be biased or part of a cultural tradition that is biased” (Paragraph 9). In this article, Richards is suggesting that many of us ignore that the gender pay gap is even an issue. Sometimes we are oblivious to the fact that gender pay gap is a conflict that exists and other times we ignore the issue because of our pride. We are unable to admit that gender pay gap is a huge problem because then we would have to admit a form of discrimination still exists which is bias. In conclusion, Richards’ belief is that the gender pay gap isn’t seen as an enormous conflict because it lacks awareness and shows the flaws we have in
society.
In my view, Richards is right because people blame the jobs women are working instead of focusing on how the gender pay gap conflict actually lacks awareness. More specifically, I believe that lack of awareness is one of the main factors of the gender pay gap conflict instead of the jobs women work at. For example, many argue that women aren’t paid less, “they’re just in lower-paying jobs over all” (Paragraph 6). Although some may object that women are generally working low paying jobs and gender plays no role in how much they earn, I maintain that gender has a vast impact on how much a person earns. Richards states, “Rearranging women into high-paying occupations would erase just 15 percent of the pay gap for all workers” (Paragraph 7). He saying that even if women had higher paying jobs the conflict of gender pay gap would still exist today. Therefore, I conclude that raising awareness of the gender pay gap and by admitting that biases still exists today will help us terminate the gender pay gap.