Women and Workplace Discrimination- A (Pay) Gap Between the Sexes

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November 24, 2015
by t.diaz
Comments Off on Pay Equity &Discrimination in the U.S: Claiming Gender Equality in the Workplace

Pay Equity &Discrimination in the U.S: Claiming Gender Equality in the Workplace

 Although Congress passed several acts legalizing equal pay between men and women in the United States, women today are still discriminated against in the workplace because they do not earn equal wages for completing the same amount of work as men.women-like-men-but

Examples:

According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, today, Women make up almost half of the workforce.  They receive more college and graduate degrees than men. And yet,  despite of all progress, woman still continue to earn significantly less than men.

 According to results derived from a research conducted by the IWPR ,in 2014, the female full-time workers made only 79 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 21 percent. Their research also indicates that:

  • Women, on average, earn less than men in virtually every single occupation for which there is sufficient earnings data for both men and women to calculate an earnings ratio.
  • According to [their] research, if change continues at the same slow pace as it has done for the past fifty years, it will take 44 years—or until 2059—for women to finally reach pay parity. 
  • sex and race discrimination in the workplace shows that outright discrimination in pay, hiring, or promotions continues to be a significant feature of working life.
  • Pay equity may be affected by the segregation of jobs by gender and other factors. Despite the level of qualification, jobs thats are primarily done by woman pay less on average than jobs primarily done by men.
  • Women have made tremendous strides during the last few decades by moving into jobs and occupations previously done almost exclusively by men, yet during the last decade there has been very little further progress in the gender integration of work. In some industries and occupations, like construction, there has been no progress in forty years. This persistent occupational segregation is a primary contributor to the lack of significant progress in closing the wage gap.
  • the poverty rate for working women would be cut in half if women were paid the same as comparable men.

 

 

 

November 18, 2015
by t.diaz
Comments Off on Historical Background: Persistent Wage Gaps

Historical Background: Persistent Wage Gaps

url-1Women of color, immigrant women and poor and working class women, to name a few – have worked outside the home…since the country’s beginning

  • During WWII an unprecedented number of women entered the workforce, largely replacing male workers in war labor industry. Women were expected to exist in the “private” sphere, performing unpaid work. Since then, “the world of paid work has primarily existed as part of men’s “public” sphere in the American psyche.”
  • Recognizing that women largely replaced male workers in war labor industry, the National War Labor Board in 1942 encouraged industry leaders to make “adjustments which [would] equalize wage or salary rates paid to females with the rates paid to males for comparable quality and quantity of work on the same or similar operation.”
  •  More and more women entered the world of paid labor thereafter, and pay discrimination based on sex remained widespread and continued openly and unashamedly.
  • On June 10, 1963, the Equal Pay Act was signed into law by president John F. Kennedy aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex.