Rhetorical Essay

The idea of the gender pay gap came from the world cup this summer, while watching the games I would discuss it with my former coach and she was telling me about how females athletes make nothing compared to men. This problem will never be fixed due to the fact that their is a handful of people that believe it’s not real which makes it debatable. And writing a rhetorical essay on a debatable topic makes it easy.

                                    The Gender Pay Gap Must Go 

“U.S. women working full-time earned just $0.80 for every dollar earned by a man in 2016”(Umoh, 2018) but yet “only 61 percent of men believe that men earn more than women for doing the same job.”(Umoh, 2018) Even if statistic prove so, there are at least 39 percent of men that will disagree, saying there is no pay gap. While this fight is against women versus society, and how society view women role, many authors have used their platforms to persuade and argue against the 39 percent of male that can’t come to terms with the realty of the gender pay gaps.

Since the early 1900’s women have insisted for improved wages and working conditions, as Francine D Balue and Lawrence M Kahn would say women journey to equal pay has been a “mixed picture”. With the use of word chose in the article “The Gender Pay Gap”, Francine D Balue and Lawrence M Kahn evoke guilt on the male audience to get their point across. For example, while discussing the “substantial increase in women’s relative earning since the late 1970s” (Francine D Balue and Lawrence M Kahn, 2007), they use words like “dramatic” and “significant” to describe women achievements to equal pay. The words “dramatic” and “significant” imply an impactful difference bringing the reader comfort to know things are progressing in a positive way. However, Francine D Balue and Lawrence M Kahn do not use the word “mixed picture” for no reason, while the gender pay gap has improved, women continue to earn less than men on average “and the convergence that began in the late 1970s slowed noticeably in the 1990s. Is this slowdown just a blip in an overall trend, or has the pay gap converged as far as it can?” (Francine D Balue and Lawrence M. Kahn, 2007).  While change has happened, the progress has slowed down noticeable in the 1990s. This raises the question that causes guilt in the audience, is this slowdown just a glitch or is this the closes women will ever get earning the same amount as men?

The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) founded in 1972, without this unity women would not have seen the “Signiant” and “dramatic” growth in pay. As of result of the $0.20 that women are not making compared to men, the NWLC have been working to advocate “for congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, a common-sense bill that would make it easier for women to combat wage discrimination, keep businesses from punishing their employees for discussing their pay, and make sure victims of wage discrimination are compensated.” (NWLC). With the use of logos, the NWLC examine all the “common-sense” reasons for the high demanding need for the Paycheck Fairness Act in their article “Equal Pay & The Wage Gap”. As of right now “women of every race are paid less than men, at all education levels- and it only gets worse as women’s careers progress.”(NWLC) Since a full two-thirds of minimum waged works are women its only logical  for an act that protects women from “combat wage discrimination”. Women are already suffering with minimum waged jobs and now imagine if they had a “real” paying job after many years of education and still didn’t earn enough as males. As a “common-sense” solution the NWLC believes if we lift the salaries of “women in low-waged jobs, making it easier for women to enter high-paying careers and ensuring women don’t take a financial hit for being parents” (NWLC) it would have a “huge impact on the wage gap” (NWLC). The fact that they mentioned the problem with a reasonable solution makes it harder for the 39 percent of male to argue against the gender pay gap because their solution not only benefits women, but it benefits everyone by raising the minimum wage. In addition, the plan for the Paycheck Fairness Act won’t make a difference in a man’s everyday life.  But it will have a “huge impact” on women everyday life.

The first step to making a change is having numbers by your side, to do so we must kill off all the myths the 39 percent of male support. In the article “How to convince a skeptic the pay gap is real” the CNBC news writer Ruth Umoh uses research from the AAUW (American Association of University Women) as a form to rebuttal every possible reason 39 percent of men would be in disbelief of gender pay gaps. For instances all her subtitles are myths that support the theory gender pay gaps that don’t exist; “Women leave the workforce to have kids”, to rebuttal this myth Umoh uses the finding of Kevin Miller, a senior researcher at AAUW to state the fact that when women have children they are likely to experience pay cuts rather than men who receive an increase pay for every child birth, also known as a “fatherhood bonus”. Next, she states that “Men work harder and longer hours”, while citing the American Time Use survey the conclusion that women have a second job that consist of taking care of kids, older family member and housework were made. Men don’t have to worry about a second long and tiring job, causing men to be “able to have longer continuous work hours, which research shows is given a pay premium in the workforce… “So, this unpaid second shift that women are doing,” says Miller, “is subsidizing men’s work.”(Umoh, 2018)  Umoh makes sure to get her perspective across by having well developed research and rhetoric’s to prove that gender pay gap is real and is a serious issue.

Woman income shouldn’t depend on them having children or not. As Ruth Umoh states one of the leading excuses for the gender pay gay is that women leave the workforce to have kids. In the article “Why No Women Rank Among the World’s 100 Highest-Paid Athletes” by Kurt Badenhausen, Badenhausen uses evidence to support his claim that “the sports world has not been immune to the gap when it comes to salaries and prize money”(Badenhausen, 2018). By Badenhausen choice of word it indicated that the gender pay gap is a strong disease spreading from occupation to occupation including the world of sports. Ever since 2012 when Forbes expanded the list from top 50 highest-paid athletes to top 100 highest-paid athletes there has been at least one female tennis player, till now. For the past six years Serena Williams, the top earning female athlete due to her incredible talent in the game tennis has made the Forbes top 100 earning list till she got pregnant. Before having a baby, Williams was earning about $8 million, but after having a baby her prize money fell short to $62,000, this just emphasizes the senior researcher at AAUW when women have children, they are likely to experience pay cuts.

While 39 percent is less than half, 39 percent is still large enough to prevent change from occurring. Authors like Francine D Balue and Lawrence M Kahn, The National Women’s Law Center, Ruth Umoh and Kurt Badenhausen all tackle the obstacle of the gender pay gap in a variety of ways with the same goal in mind, to persuade everyone to accept the tragic truth that there is a difference in pay between genders and this must be repaired. While as time progresses, more men do end up believing in the gender gap pay but that’s not enough, that’s only the first step into making a change, together we stand in unity and the more numbers the better.

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