Assessing The Gender Wage Gap

Assessing the Gender Wage Gap

Throughout American history, discrimination has always been a problem no matter what event of the past. It 's a constant battle whether its race, religion, beliefs, gender, or simply how someone appears. One of the most controversial of these has to be the debates on whether or not there truly is a Gender Wage Gap. In fact, it does exist, but those who hear the words, “Gender Wage Gap”, may believe in a system where it 's designed to pay women less, regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class, than their counter sex. It may also seem that due to this, system, it generally means that women will have unequal pay for equal work. Some even believe that unequal pay impacts women of color harder more than a

The Bureau of Labor provides the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by detailed occupation and sex which in turn shows that averagely, women make eighty-two cents to every dollar a man makes based on occupation and work time. Although there is a 20% gap and may seem significant, it is clear that it is possible to keep in mind that this is merely based on occupation and full work time, not on experience or-or how long someone has worked at their job. According to a March report from the NWLC (National Women 's Law Center), “The pay gap means women lose around $10,470 in median earnings a year” (CNN Money paragraph. 2). When accounting for part-time jobs, it also contributes to the gap, as the Pew Research Center states when determining the how part-time workers contribute to the gap, “...women are twice as likely as men—26% versus 13%—to work part-time” (paragraph 2). From all these factors, this still does not determine that this fall upon sexism or discrimination in the workforce. Both of these statistics provide details of how long both sexes work and how much they have worked but does not count for experience or qualification. Again this is the only evidence that sheds some light on why the Gender Wage Gap exists and because how it exist under the circumstances.

When discussing the wage gap people also tend to leave out that generally,

An example of men leading in STEM fields would have to be the number one top choice for men, engineering. While there are many forms of engineering fields, the one where men major in and go to work after college would be, Petroleum engineering which has an annual salary of $136,000 a year (CNN Money). Now women compared to men generally major in work that consists of health, education or social work. For example, a highly dominated women 's field would be, early child development which 97% of women dominate while only 3% of men actually go into, earning only a median annual salary of $36,000. Now, in this case, this is where the wage gap comes in, men generally dominate higher paying majors that include STEM fields and make more money compared to women. The Atlantic also contributes to this point by stating,

Comparing men and women job-by-job conceals the fact that men still dominate many of the highest-paying jobs. PayScale studied more than 120 occupation categories, from "machinist" to "dietician." Nine of the ten lowest-paying jobs (e.g.: child-care worker, library assistant) were disproportionately female. Nine of the ten highest-paying jobs (e.g.: software architect, psychiatrist) were majority male. Nurse anesthetist was the best-paid position held mostly by women, but an estimated 69 percent of better-paid anesthesiologists were