Gender Pay Gap Summary & Response Essay Example

Inequality has been a dilemma for several years in countless different ways. A persistent problem with disproportion of income between women and men has been lingering within many companies in the United States. It has been said that women earn less money than men in the workplace for many different reasons. Some of these reasons are that women have not spent enough time in the office to be rewarded with raises and bonuses because they are busy with their home lives and taking care of their children, they, unlike men, have been taught to be timid and unaggressive which ultimately steers them away from requesting higher pay, or they do not meet the qualifications to receive promotions (Hymowitz, 2008). This essay is in response to On Diversity, America Isn’t Putting Its Money Where Its Mouth Is in which the writer presents her argument as to why women should not earn less than men in the workplace. In this day and age when we have come far enough to have an African-American man as our president, women who hold equivalent or greater qualifications as their male counterparts should earn equal pay if they hold the same position in every company without question.
In Carol Hymowitz’s article, On Diversity, America Isn’t Putting Its Money Where Its Mouth Is, she states that the increasing amount of women being paid less than men in some of the nation’s biggest companies proves that businesses do not equally value their employees. In her research it was found that “young women earned 20% to 25% less than young men at the same education level -- about equal to men at an education level below theirs.” (Hymowitz, 2008) She believes that the lack of diversity within companies is only increased and vanquishes any achievement towards equality progression once a top female executive leaves the company or retires. The author feels as though the inequality that resides within companies emphasize that women, by some means, lack the leadership skills that men have attained