Preview

Gender Discrimination: the Main Reason That Women Are Paid Less Than Men

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
4951 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Gender Discrimination: the Main Reason That Women Are Paid Less Than Men
GENDER DISCRIMINATION: THE MAIN REASON THAT WOMEN ARE PAID LESS THAN MEN

SURVEY OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Introduction
More than 2,000 years ago the Greek philosopher Plato wrote… “Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.”(Plato, The Laws) There is a nationwide debate as to whether or not women are paid less than men as a result of gender discrimination in the workforce. It is our position that gender discrimination is in fact the main reason women are paid less than men, and we will defend our position with appropriate statistics and facts.
This is no doubt a sensitive issue and there are a lot of different views and opinions throughout the world. It is certain that this topic is influenced by a wide range of factors and is also affected by geographical effects. Furthermore, if we want to hold the view that gender discrimination is largely responsible for differences in wage between men and woman, we have to concentrate on a specific market. In this case, on the United States, we should look on the hypothesis from different perspectives.
To effectively defend our position, it is beneficial to break down our position into two parts. First, we have to prove that a gender pay gap in the United States actually exists. If we want to prove a crowding hypothesis we not only have to support this theory by referring to appropriate statistics, studies, and research, but also the existence of this hypothesis itself. Human resource managers are largely responsible for compensating employees, which would ultimately affect the pay gap between men and women. Human resource managers were asked if they think there actually is a gender pay gap among America’s companies, and if it existed inside there own organization. According to a recent study published by the



References: Christie, J. (2007). Wal-Mart faces historic sex bias case. Reuters. Retrieved February 7, 2007, from http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-02-07T004622Z_01_N06255418_RTRUKOC_0_US-WALMART-CLASSACTION.xml Heintz, J., Folbre, N. (2000) Field Guide to the U.S. Economy. New York: New Press, New Updated edition. pg. 145-149 Mather, M., Adams, D

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Women in the workplace are reported to make “seventy nine cents for every dollar earned by men” (IWPR.org). The reason for this twenty-one percent gap can vary. Women who do a job that is considered to be a “man only” position, could cause women to make less than men. Even though the female employee may be equally as qualified. This reason mainly happens in construction sites, or other demanding jobs. Another reason may be just that the employee is a female. However, managers and other employees should open their eyes and realize that there are no “man only” jobs, and that women should be paid as equally as men in any…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Gender Pay Gap

    • 1639 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The study “Global Employment Trends for Women” published by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 2009 provides current information about the global gender pay gap. Assumptions about a decline or increase in the pay gap between women and men depend on the data available and differ in the subjects of study and country-specific wage and salary administration. Therefore a closer look should be taken at regional specificities.…

    • 1639 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The idea that women earn less than men in the work place is no longer a subject for debate. Study after study has shown that women earn less than their male counterparts. In 1998, for every dollar a man makes, a woman earns .73 cents (CNN, 2000). Since then it has gotten better but not by much. As of 2010 women earned .79 cents to every dollar earned by men. The gender wage gap is a statistical indicator used to show the status of women 's earnings relative to men 's. This nation, unfortunately, has a history of making gender inequality legal. Laws pass early in the 20th century showed that the view that many in the country did not believe that women could not do the same amount of work that men did. This gave way to wage disparity.…

    • 3284 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    First, the pay that women receive is still unequal to that of their male counterparts. On average, white women are paid 78 cents to the white man’s dollar, and it is worse for women of color; for instance, to the white man’s dollar, black women are only paid 64 cents, Hispanic women are paid 54 cents, and Native American women are paid 59 cents. This is ridiculous, without a doubt. Gender and race should not have anything to do with it. Furthermore, besides the wage gap, many women in work are needlessly sexualized. In an article by Beth Elise Schneider from the University of Massachusetts, she explains the results of a study done on sexuality in the workplace. The issues that women have experienced, according to this study, include sexual harassment and objectification. In some cases, women are even let go because men find their bodies “distracting’, when they should not be staring at women in a professional environment at all. This directly connects to my third point: men do not take women seriously in the labor force. Many men see women as less than human or view them as not capable of performing “a man’s job”. I find these stereotypes incredibly demeaning to a woman’s…

    • 535 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Wage Gap Analysis

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Two landmark court cases served to strengthen and further define the Equal Pay Act: Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. (1970), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit; Ruled that jobs need to be “substantially equal” nut not “identical” to fall under the protection of the Equal Pay Act. An employer cannot, for example, change the job titles of women workers in order to pay them less than men.; Corning Glass Works v. Brennan (1974) U.S. Supreme Court; Ruled that employers cannot justify paying women lower wages, because that is what they traditionally received under the “going market rate.” A wage differential occurring “simply because men would not work at the low rates paid women” was unacceptable. (“The Equal Pay Act”) While these things have caused the gap to narrow there is still s noticeable difference in the pay of…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Over the past hundred years, women’s participation in the workforce has grown significantly. Today’s women are getting college degrees which was not common before the mid-twentieth century. More of them than ever are taking jobs that were originally run by men. Many women are going into medicine, engineering, and law which was nearly impossible fifty years ago. Their ability to get into these fields allows them to pursue careers they could never before. However, there is a major gender pay gap. Men are still to this day paid way more than women. Although men have a large impact on our nation’s workforce, women perform job tasks just as effectively, therefore they are completely worthy…

    • 1615 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The impact of discrimination against women and their pay entitlements has been, without debate, proven by many polls and research efforts. According to an article published in The Wall Street Journal that conducted a poll discussing gender in workplace bias, “84% of women say men are paid more for similar work, a view borne out by government data but which draws agreement from only two-thirds of men. More than four in 10 women say they have faced gender discrimination personally, most often in the workplace” (Nelson). The article further expounds to address very specific data. Some of that data was collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that women who work full-time earn 79% of the weekly pay that men bring home. The Institute for Women's Policy Research, which tracks the gender wage gap, finds that women's median earnings lag men's in almost every occupation. While the gap narrowed during the 1980s and 1990s, there has been little movement since 2000” (Nelson). While there are minute differences in statistical findings from different reports, they have all provided the same general concept that differences in pay do exist based on…

    • 1849 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Gender Wage Gap

    • 726 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Have you ever considered that the gender wage gap can account for gender wage gap? Men and women grossing difference has been an ongoing examination. In 2010 Jingyo Suh published “Decomposition of the Change in the Gender Wage Gap” in which he conducted a study investigating determinants and characteristics of changes in the gender gap between 1989 and 2005. The 1970s and 1980s were decades of remarkable economic progress for women. After a period of stagnation in the early 1970s at the low 60 percent of the average men's wage, earnings for women in salaried full-time year-round positions grew faster than men's and narrowed the gender wage gap (Suh, 2010). Although the gap has narrowed, it is still ongoing and exists. What causes this ongoing…

    • 726 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “In 2015, only half of the world’s working-age women are in the labor force, compared to 77 percent of working-age men,” (MAKERS). Everyday, women face unequal circumstances and situations within the workplace. The average woman’s wage is significantly lower than their male colleagues. This would also mean that men have more job opportunities than women. All these disadvantages women face negatively affect their careers. The government has tried to decrease the inequality by creating laws, but they are never harshly enforced. Improvements for women are needed in the workplace because they will increase women’s career rights and the quality in the workplace overall.…

    • 1728 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    For many centuries, women have had to fight for their rights. In today’s society, women are still discriminated against in the workplace. Generations of women have sacrificed for woman today to have the opportunity to be able to have a voice on what they want to do in life. In the workforce, women make up 47% of the United States workforce (“Women's Bureau (WB) - Quick Facts on Women in the Labor Force in 2010"). This is almost half but yet they are paid less than men. Men are often bound to receive a promotion, transfer, and compensation before women. The broader problems of obvious discrimination against women in the workforce have been dealt with for centuries. Across the world, women are discriminated against in the workforce through family…

    • 1635 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Gender Wage Gap in America

    • 1549 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The gender wage gap has been around since women began having jobs and careers. Though in the beginning the gender wage gap was purely do to discrimination by social stereotypes, now it has become more complicated than that. The issue today has evolved into a complex issue which combines our American culture with business economics. As a result, some are skeptical of the issue and some are very adamant in their beliefs. The issue encompasses not only gender stereo types but also educational, government policies and business’s best practices.…

    • 1549 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Human Resource Management

    • 594 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Evaluation of whether a company is fair to women in terms of pay structure could be done from two perspectives. The first would include a comparison of remuneration of women with regard to that of men. In this regard, the determination of whether the company is fair or discriminative to women when it comes to pay structure would be based on whether there exist great disparities or differences between pay for men and that for women serving in the same job group. On the other hand, this could be determined through recruitment and employment policy of the company. Whereas the company may not directly pay women less amounts of pay as compared to men, it may do so through developing policies that inhibit professional growth and advancement of women employs and indirectly keeps their pay at the lowest rates (Weiss, 2004).…

    • 594 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    For example, it is considered as a women profession being maids, secretaries, nurses or teachers meanwhile, it is considered as man profession being managers, lawyers, engineers or professors. This creates the idea that women are not able to do a “man job”, we talk specifically about women due to it is where we mostly see the occupational segregation. Even though, the rate of women taking “man” jobs has increased, there exists another problem: the pay gap between men and women. As we talk before, socialization plays a key factor in this issue. Usually women are paid less for the same job that men do because of their gender. As a patriarchal society, women are considered less important than men, even if they have the same educative level as men. After 1980, the wage rate between men and women started to equalize; however, in the 2000’s women are still earning just 76% of what man do. Why have women been paying less than men when they have the same abilities? Some of the reasons are “the idea that women should be modest while men should promote themselves, women may negotiate less strongly for pay”, “women are concentrated in lower-paying occupations”, “employers often do this out of a biased perception that whatever is done by women must be easier and not as important or the company” (The Sociology Project 2.0), even if there exist some laws that protect women against…

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Teamwork Paper

    • 1181 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The review of literature consists of the research topic, which includes how a female employee is paid in comparison to a male employee. The pay-gap between the average pay of men and women has been an issue for the past decades. “The main explanations for the gap are occupational which confines women to the least well paid jobs and industries methods of pay determination which work against equal pay “(Doherty & Stead, p. 17). The peer-reviewed articles summarize within the hotel and catering industries itself; variations were found in the pay in different sectors of the industry and within occupational groups” (Doherty & Stead, p. 17). For example a female’s earning in commercial catering services were proven to be paid higher in the industries like hotels, restaurants, pubs, and clubs but at the same time women were found to have increased their share of management posts were tended to be less well paid than those positions held by men. Another article that states that the House of Representative Standing Committee on Employment and workplace Relations inquiry into pay equity examined why women workers continue to be paid less than their male employers even thought they both have the same job skills, experience ,and also performed the same job functions. Another found articles on peer reviewed, states “a job theory of discrimination has the virtue that it addresses a stylized fact in the labor market that women received about the same treatment as men within job but are less likely to be promoted into good job positions. The theory derives an explicit rule for promotions bias according to sex and predicts the way it varies by firm-specific job value” (Lazear, E.& Rosen (1990).…

    • 1181 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Gender pay gaps persist not only in the United States but also around the world. The gender pay inequality is the reason why female in America makes 78 cents per 1 dollar of males’ salary. The gender is still the factor when it comes of determining a salary for an employee. Woman always placed with wage discrepancies and difference compared to what men earn. Unseen and often not acknowledged barriers that stop a woman from rising to upper position regardless of their achievement or qualifications. These patterns shows acceptance and power of social structure in our society.…

    • 233 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays