The Gender Pay Gap

Introduction

The gender pay gap has long been investigated and it is hard to pinpoint exactly why there is a gap between the amounts of money that men earn the amount of money earned by women. There are so many factors that go into why someone is paid more than someone else that it could be said because of so many of these factors that a wage gap does not exist at all. Throughout the paper wage gap will be explored and how choices both men and women make factor into the pay gap. Also how a wage gap may not exist and it all lies in choices made by both genders, but the most common idea of discrimination towards women could also be a factor in pay differences.

How Career Choices Affect the Pay Gap.

Choices… this could be the reason that a “wage

As explained in the first paragraph it is all up to the choices made by each gender. There are many factors that go into doing the calculations for finding the wage gap between genders and among choices that are made regarding career there are also choices that are uncontrollable like being unemployed. In a study by the Journal of Labor Economics (2008) it was discovered that “women tend on average to be more positively selected into work than men. However, the difference between actual and potential wage gaps is small...where the gender employment gap is highest.” (P. 625). This piece of evidence is very important because when calculating for the wage gap unemployment is also taken into factor and there is a big gender employment gap with more women not in jobs. This means women will be earning less money when averaged with men because more men have jobs. Many women are out of work for many reasons such as family matters and still in a patriarchal society today men are seen as the “breadwinners” of families however, society is ever changing. Besides unemployment another major factor that goes into the so called wage gap are women's choices in jobs as well as the responsibilities many women are felt they need to take on as well as a career. In a paper by Watson (2017) the author states “Primarily, women are more likely to take time off work for childcare, leading to less experience and fewer opportunities for career growth later in life. Some blame oppressive societal gender roles for urging women to be the caretakers of the home, but the reality is that women are less likely to devote the majority of their lives to their careers -- leading to fewer overall wage earnings.” (P. 1). These factors such as being caretakers at home are reasons why when wage gap is calculated it is seen that women are earning less than men but as explained because some women do not devote themselves to