Men Vs Women: The Issue Of Equal Pay

The issue of equal pay has established a lot of attention over the past several years. Currently, women make up for about half of the workforce (Leuze & Strauß, 2016). In addition to this, they are also the main earners of a household with children for about half of the American families in the country and earn more college and graduate degrees than men (Leuze & Strauß, 2016). Despite these factors, they still earn significantly less than men. In 2016, women who worked full-time and worked all year made only 80 cents for every dollar that their male counterparts earned, which shows a wage gap of 20% (Leuze & Strauß, 2016). On average, women earn less than men in almost every profession that has enough earnings data for both men and women in order to find out an earnings ratio (Group, 2015). It is reported that sex and race discrimination in the workplace shows that obvious discrimination in pay, hiring or advancements continue to be a noteworthy feature of employed life (Group, 2015).

It is also noted that female-associated jobs tend to be undervalued. Jobs with a large number of women who are engaged in certain tasks that are related to reproductive or caring for others are usually paid less (Leuze & Strauß, 2016). Time spent per day while on the job is also important in understanding why female dominated jobs are lower paying. Since there are more women who work in more place on a part-time basis than working at a place with employees who work more over-time hours, they end up earning less than their male equals (Leuze & Strauß, 2016). Male-typical working hours in an occupation are supported by society as the ideal time of the day to work, and therefore are culturally valued less than female-typical working hours that are more lenient to give mothers time for unpaid home care work (Leuze & Strauß, 2016).

Another reason may be because women disproportionally look for occupations, including full-time occupations, that are inclined to be well-suited with child-care and other family responsibilities (Sorenson, 1984). Women, more so than men, are even anticipated to have a certain level of flexibility in their jobs such as work hours and shifts that can be changed and rearranged to accommodate emergencies at home (Sorenson, 1984). These types of jobs with this level of flexibility tend to be jobs with lower earnings per hour, even when the total number of hours is the same when a male and female work the same occupation (Sorenson, 1984).