Research Paper

In this research essay I target uneducated people on the topic of the gender pay gap, the more people who know the facts the more likely they are to fight for the cause. With this research paper I learned thats their more to the gender pay gap then I thought and theirs more elements to the reason why women don’t get payed as much.

What Are the Root Causes for The Large Pay Gaps?   

If this country were to be demonstrated as a play, men would be the actors getting all the fame while women would be the backstage crew with no recognition. However, without women the play wouldn’t function, you can have all the stars in the world but who will lift the curtains when it’s time for the play to start? Who will tell them to go on stage? And who’s going to make them look good to go on stage? Just as the backstage crew is the backbone of the play, women are the backbone of this country. Women put in a lot of work to get no recognition, this is proven by the large gender pay gap.  For every dollar a male will make, females will make 18% less than that. While there is many misinformation as to why the gender pay gap is a myth, there is a ton more concrete root causes for the gender pay gap.  

Before the 1920’s women had no rights, they had to find a husband or else they would have no one to support them, they had no voice in society and their only job was to stay home cleaning, cooking and watching over the kids. However, this all changed after World War I happen, since most of the men were off fighting the war, women had to step in and take charge of “men’s work” meaning they became “railway guards and ticket collectors, buses and tram conductors, postal workers, police, firefighters and bank ‘tellers’ and clerks. Some women also worked heavy or precision machinery in engineering, led cart horses on farms, and worked in the civil service and factories.” Due to most the high demand of workers, this caused women’s employment rates to increase from 23.6% to 46.7%. (Striking women) This was the start of the gender wage gap and women hunger for equality.  

The gender wage pay starts with this belief that some jobs are “men’s work”, this tends to be the higher paying occupations that involves authority over coworkers or heavy lifting. Women are less qualified for “men’s work” due to the stereotypes about women’s cognitive, physical and personality characteristics influence employers and employees, for example the stereotype that “women cannot be bosses because they let their emotion get in the way of real business”. This diminishes the stereotypical female jobs value, because anyone could do paperwork or something female like but only men could do a typical men’s job. Study have been done to prove the stereotypes of gender role jobs, for example a group of psychologists wanted to test the hypothesis of stereotypes, so they gathered a group of 238 participants to determine whether their gender of target job assignment matched the typical stereotypes perceptions. “The vast majority participants (82%) agreed with our preconceptions regarding the gender domain of the target jobs. The other 18% of respondents reversed the job gender (e.g., they labeled a job that had been conceived of as female gender‐typed as male or vice versa). Reversals were fairly infrequent for the department store clerk target jobs, whereas they were more common for the teacher and editor target jobs.” (Christine Alksnis,Serge Desmarais,James Curtis, 2008) These finding supports the stereotypical beliefs people have about jobs, leading to the gender pay gap. 

Occupational choice is an important factor for women only. Studies show that when men enter a female dominated field, they will earn more than a woman. For example, male preschool teachers earn $16.33 per hour, compared to $14.42 per hour that female make. (Economic Policy Institute) While women tend to gravitate towards lower-paid fields like education, due to men dominating high paying occupations, on average women make up than 30 percent of the country’s top-paid jobs. The few that work in highly paid fields such as finance and medicine feel the most unfairly economic pain from the gender wag gap. “Women at the top end of the wage-distribution spectrum earn just 74 cents for every $1 men earn. (Economic Policy Institute)” This has a major effect on a women’s future, a typical woman will lose more than $53,000 earning less than a male and a college educated woman will lose $800,000. In addition, women on average live longer than men causing issues with the country’s retirement and leaving more women to live in poverty than men over the age of 65. This causes women to save $1.25 for every $1 men save for retirement.  

Setting also matters when it comes to equal pay, once the number of female workers increases in a job causing it to be dominated by women, the job’s value will decrease. A simple solution would be to hire more men to make the job value increase, however that’s not the case, when “individuals responsible for hiring often (mistakenly) assume that because men are more likely than women to hold a particular job, it is necessary to have “men’s” traits in order to do that job (Cejka & Eagly, 1999)” Or in this case vice versa because so many women can hold that specific occupation requirement, the person in charge is more likely to hire a woman. As a result, of the equal-pay legislation, pay differences within an organization where both genders are doing the same exact jobs have been outlawed. But doesn’t stop the gender pay gap, some firms will change the job titles and description for similar task and only hire women for one job and only hire men for the other, benefiting men because they are able to earn more since both genders aren’t under the same job title. 

Since 60 percent of women are working normal jobs rather than working high-paying jobs, they feel the most affect from the low minimum wage. Research done from many countries provides evidence that increasing the minimum wage can lower the gender pay gap, which will benefit all the people in the bottom of the wage distribution that are mostly women. For example, in Germany a study done in 2015 on the gender differenced in wage showed that “the gender pay differential is reduced by 2.5 percentage points (pp), from 19.6% to 17.1%,” … When the authors incorporated the minimum wage effects on labor demand, a further reduction of the pay gap by 0.2 pp (1.2 pp) in the case of a monopolistic (neoclassical) labor market was achieved.” (Boll et al., 2015). In addition, when analyzing the effects of the introduction of the national minimum wage in Ireland and the United Kingdome a large reduction was found on the gender pay gap. In Japan they found that the minimum wage increase resulted “in the compression of the lower tail of the wage distribution among women, and that it accounted for half of the reduction in lower-tail inequality that occurred among women during the period between 1994 and 2003.” (Kambayashi et al., 2013) All these results have proven the correlation between the gender wage gap and minimum wage, the more you increase the minimum wage the less of a gap between gender pays.  

Before being able to achieve gender equality we must first solve the problems in between genders. Racism and discrimination surround the workplace, causing some race to feel superior and earning more than others. In a study by the National Centre for Social Research, 44 percent of people surveyed believe that “some races are born harder working than other”, this makes people bias towards specific races when it comes to hiring employees. This doesn’t only affect women job opportunity but also their pay level, on top of not getting paid enough as men research done in Canada have shown “racialized women earned 55.6 cents for every dollar non-racialized man earned in 2005 … racialized women earned 88.2 cents for every dollar that non-racialized women earned.”(Melayna Williams, 2018) If you want to get into further research, indigenous and Canadian women of color earn 64 percent of men’s while Aboriginal women earn just 46 percent of men. Think of the gender pay gap as a tree, the pay gap would be the leaves, the branches would be men and women then the branches in the branches would be race. You can’t get the leaves without passing by all the branches, meaning you can’t fix the gender pay gap without fixing the inequality between the sex and in-between the sex.  

In the contract, there is at least 39 percent of men that argue against the gender pay gap calling it a “myth” or that its already dealt with. April 10 of 2018 in the United States marked the first Equal Pay Day, this symbolizes the dedication towards raising awareness of the gender pay gap. It demonstrates the journey women must work towards just to earn what men earned in previous year and a new national monument towards women equality. November 1 of 2018 marks the Latina Womens Equal Pay Day, this marks a point where Latina women are making as much as a white man in 2017. Due to these big turning points, people will argue that the gender wage gap is over since there is a day to celebrate equality. Also, all the statistic about the gender wage gap is a strategy the White House and others who promote the gender wage gap use to “manipulating statistics in a way to convince women that they are the victims of systematic societal discrimination, and, therefore, stand to benefit from further government action.” (Karin Agness Lips, 2016) They manipulate statistics by not taking account of women’s educations, years of experience and hours worked. Despite, them not taking into account women’s education, years of experience or hours worked, it won’t matter because it proven that women can have the same education as men and work in the same field, but men will still earn more for every hour worked. For example, the preschool scenario; male preschool teachers earn $16.33 per hour, compared to $14.42 per hour that female make. (Economic Policy Institute). They both have the same level of education, work the same hours but yet the male preschool teacher earning her per hour. 

To prevent this country from looking like a terrible play, we need to acknowledge all the hard-working people, the actors and the backstage crew. Without unity and equality, the play wouldn’t meet the highest standard set, this goes for our country without equality this country missing its chance on having many hard-working doctors or other high paying jobs that women aren’t striving for due to the gender pay gap.  “When we hold back for fear of failure or are overly judgmental of ourselves, we rob our customers, our employers and employees, our colleagues and partners of our talents and expertise. Trust in your hard work, knowledge, and aptitudes.” – Stephanie Dismore, Vice President & General Manager, Americas Channels, HP  

Reference Page  

  • Williams, Melayna. “The gap within the pay gap: Filter the numbers on the basis of race, and far greater wage discrepancies start to appear.” Maclean’s, Mar. 2018, p. 26. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526733822/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=530b1d78. Accessed 3 Nov. 2018. 
  • “Striking Women.” World War I: 1914-1918 | Striking Women, www.striking-women.org/module/women-and-work/world-war-i-1914-1918. 
  • Speaking English the problem for minorities? Hardly … Racism, sexism, the gender pay gap and voter registration are far more pressing issues; Racism, sexism, the gender pay gap and voter registration are far more pressing issues.” Observer[London, England], 18 Mar. 2018. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531422888/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=d0178cc1. Accessed 2 Nov. 2018.
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