The Global Issue Of Uneven Gender Pay Gap

Introduction

Nowadays, equality between the male and female is paid more and more attention by people. This is situation was shown by more and more people have studied the existence of equality between men and women from different perspectives such as salary, treatment, employment opportunities, education, religion and so on. This time, our research mainly studies the gender pay gap happened in Malaysia. This is because we found that male employees tend to get paid higher than female employees(Lee, 2017). This is not fair to those female workers who work in the same position as a male worker but get lower paid.

Due to this problem, we decided to do more research on this topic in order to find the answer for why the gender pay gap are happened in Malaysia and possibilities to achieving gender equality in the future. The study could also provide important information about the gender pay gap in the future. This is because our research covers many different aspects, such as causes and consequences, which provide more important information about gender pay gap. In addition, our study also does further research and discussion on the basis of other studies on the gender pay gap. So our research may play a key role in the future project implement such as raising awareness of gender equality in the workplace (Uniteforsight.org, 2013)(Zarah, 2019).

This research is important and worthy to investigate and seek solutions to this problem on the accounts of the huge benefits of the settlement of this issue. First of all, the elimination of gender pay gap can help to develop a country(Mic, 2019). By resolving the gender wage gap issue, women are more wealthy. Since women do not need to worry about their financial status and life, the probability is higher for women to give birth to healthier and higher educated children because they can which is good for a country's development (World Economic Forum, 2019). Another reason is that both genders can provide diversity in thinking. The mindset and behaviour of women and men can be very un-identical in nature and is very hard to differentiate whether which one is the better one and which is not. It is best to try to adopt all opinions as it is always better to form a diversity team than the homogeneous ones because of the higher chances for former to produce more ideas and creativity to confront many hard and complicated situations (4 Reasons to Accelerate the Race for Gender Equality 2019). Thirdly, wage equality is one of the basic women's rights ( Taylor Swift, n.d.). Namely, companies are obliged to give the same pay regardless of the gender and should not make excuses to it, especially when the contemporary generation has more concerning towards human rights issues. Last but not least, resolvance of gender wage gap helps to develop a peaceful society (4 Reasons to Accelerate the Race for Gender Equality, 2019). In this way, Women will not compare her selves with men and also reduce the turnover rate. Women are more independent and are able to sustain themselves.

Moreover, this research is a kind of good quality research because this research fulfils the characteristics of good quality research. This is because our research is on the account of other researchers work. Besides, our research are also able to generate more other questions for other researchers to do further research on it. Not only that, our research also directly related to the problem existed in the real world which is gender pay gap (DEVI et al., 2019).

In this study, we decided to use cluster sampling to collect data with 60 people who are employed or salaried in Johor Bahru area. We also plan to use questionnaire by using hand-delivered and Web-based for our target respondents.

Background of Problem

Pay gap refer to the discrepancy between male and female on the basis of average salary (Ames, 2008). The origin of gender pay gap have to link with patriarchy, the terms came from ‘pater’ also called a father which has been clearly defined that the power held by male are over than female and male have the privilege to access resources. For instance, the inheritance of property are on the basis of male line, head of the family unit which male have the authority for decision making, and opportunities to get education and occupation. On the other hand, feminist is the additional explanation of the patriarchy society system which female are dominant on household manage (Napikoski, 2019). However, the social revolution has been changed during the First World War as more and more females started to take over the “man’s job” and also making weapon for those who had gone to fight in war (GreenNet, n.d.). Year over year, female started to involved themselves in working and people become more open in terms of female places is no longer in kitchen. Nevertheless, we found that female nowadays are getting unfair paid and female have the lesser opportunity to get promotion and training in the workplace as male have the priority chance to get a job since traditionally.

There are such factors influence the wage of male have more economic opportunities than female. First, the different preferable of choosing job by different gender will probably affect the paid they received. For example, male tend to choose their job that is working with machinery, and be partial to mechanize. However female are often interested in social jobs that required to communicate with others. It is possible that male will place the “salary” as their basic requirement for finding job whereas female will concern whether the job interest them or not (Livingston, n.d.). Second, the total working hours will absolutely determine the wage of a worker. Generally, male work for longer hours than female on average which means that female especially that with children or family often work for part time job because of the family responsibility, and part time job usually associated with lower paid as compared to full time job (Vaghefi, 2018). Third, the characteristics of employers will also influence the wage to be paid. For instance, some of the employers will generally think that female employees are less productive due to they might frequently take leave and lack of leadership skills because females tend to be emotion. This situation can also called as stereotyping or discrimination against female employees that lead to receive lower wage (Ismail, Jajri, 2012). Last but not least, one of the factors that caused the pay gap is age. This factor look slightly do not have relevant to the gender equality but in fact the relationship between them is inextricably linked (Vaghefi, 2018).

Nowadays in Malaysia, the gap between both genders paid is lesser as compared to previously which male dominated in the workplace traditionally whereas more and more female engaged themselves in working currently which had decreased the paid gap obviously. However, some of the employers are still perceived females have lesser skill compared with male which lead the unequal wage in the same industry.

Therefore, female consciousness is awakening as the feminist rises, more women are given highly notice and attention to the women’s rights, which leads to the increase in number of females to join the workforce and many of them has more capability than men (Forbes.com, 2019). On the regard, the government has established the Gender Equity Act, to control the companies and also restrict their behavior of not giving total equality of wages in both men and women (LEE, 2019). As a result, employers should pay their employees accordingly to their experiences, qualifications, performances, and so on, not by the gender role. However, many females reveals that no matter how hard they work, they still get lower wages than most men. According to the studies of the Department of Statistics Malaysia in 2016, women in Malaysia get paid 79 cents to a Ringgit earned by men on average (Dosm.gov.my, 2019). Another research also reveals that the pay gap of both genders are broadening in Malaysia despite having the same workloads (LEE, 2019).

Statement of Problem

Statistic shows that the gender pay gap is a globally issue that commonly take place around the world. However, the ratio of salaries paid to female still lower than the male which women can only earn 77 percent as much as men on average (Darrah, 2019).The gender pay gap is said to be taking 202 years on average to close if we left this issue unattended due to its excessively stalled and slow pace of closing (Neate, 2019). As the men and women ages, their gaps are broadened, due to women that grows older does not work as efficiently as if they were in their 20s’ because women often need to take care of their children, their children’s education, family chores and more engagement in their family, unlike men, which usually take partial part or do not take part in taking care of their children at all (business insider, 2017). According to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that half of the economic growth is due to the female have a chance to get better education level and the numbers of the female who is able to be educated is increasing in the past 50 years.

Well developed and richer region and countries tend to have narrower gap than the currently-developing and poorer countries and areas. America’s wage gap are much more smaller than Malaysia’s and the gap is still closing slowly, bit by bit (2019). Average American women earned $0.82 for each dollar a man earned and the overall annual pay of women was $45097 whearest the men earned $55291, amounting to an annual gender gap of $10194. This situation gets worse by the different races of the women. There are report saying that Asian women earned the most amongst women, for $90 cents they get for each dollar a white man earned. The statistic becomes lower as the whites get $79cents, black women get $69 cents and the Latinas women, the worst of all, get $54 cents for every dollar paid to a white American man (2019). The statistic may look not optimistic but it is way better than Malaysia does.

As for Malaysia, women get RM0.79 for RM1 earned by men. The highest wage gap recorded in Malaysia was at thirty one percent, meaning that if this statistic were to be compared to men, women only get their paid until 15.36pm (Lee 2019). The mean salary for the average Malaysian men is RM2345 compared to women’s , which is RM2254, resulted to a huge gap in wage of RM1194. According to the salary and wages report of Department of Statistics of Malaysia, despite the wages are gradually increasing over the years for both genders, the wage gap is still increasing from 4.5% to 5.8% in 2013 to 2014. Surprisingly, Malaysia’s urban area has larger wage gap than the rural region. From the statistics of 2014, the gender pay gap was RM222 and the rural area is RM86, which contradicts with the above statement stating that urban areas usually have lower gender gap( DSM, 2017).

There are some of the reasons of why the gender pay gap is existing in our society. As we mentioned just now, stereotyping can be one of the most obvious reasons of gender pay gap. According to the research done by Phyllis Tharenou indicated that society has deep-rooted cultural and social attitudes about the ability differences between men and women (Tharenou, 2019). Not only does this have a fundamental effect on gender pay differentials but it also assigns specific work roles to men and women. For example, men have more leadership and work ability than women, and women are more suitable for health, education and public administration than men (Striking-women.org, 2018). Women make up only 14% of Members of Parliament and 19% of Cabinet ministers, but the female has to make up 67.9% of dentists in the country, 52.6% of lawyers, 52.6% of accountants, 51.9% of medical doctors and 47.3% of veterinary surgeons(The Star Online, 2019).

Not only that, other reasons that cause the gender pay gap is because of the different working hours. Actually, not only the male in malaysia work longer hours than females. This issue also happened in foreign country such as Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Korea and so on (Usual working hours per week by gender, 2018). According to the Payman Taei said that, different status of male will work different hours. For example, a single, no children male only work 43.7 hours per week while compared with same status female, they only work 42.3 hours per week. Then, the male who married with children able to work 46.6 hours per week, that is higher than before they get married. However, the same status female worker will work less hours than before they married (Taei, 2019). The reasons behind is because of the male become more responsible after they get married because they have to take care of the whole family so they are more willing to spend time on work in exchange for more money than other things besides work such as entertainment and relaxation. For the female they will work less time after getting married is because they need to do more household duties like cooking and taking care of the children.

Age also plays a role in determining salary. According to a study by Nevin Vaghefi, wage differentials also change with age, causing them to grow larger or smaller. For instance，by age 24, male are only slightly higher than females of the same age. Not only that, females between the ages of 25 and 44 earn more than male. But after the age of 44 female's pay stagnated and began to fall while male's did not begin to fall until they were 59. As a result, male earn more than females between the ages of 45 and 64. According to this study, we know that there is a wage gap between male and female at any age. In general, age is also a factor that allows employers to determine salary.

On top of that, females are interested in social jobs that required to communicate with the others, the examples are social workers or educators (Smith 2019). Such job nature does not require a lot of physical work and also fulfil the social and emotional needs of females to be able to communicate with the others, while men tend to work in mechanic industries because these industries are determined by the society as 'men's work. Also, mechanical path may be discouraged for a woman as mechanical evolves with a lot of math and physics subjects that seemingly less appealing to most women (2019). Besides, male place their basic requirement of jobs toward realistic factors, like the wages. This is because what society has on the gender stereotypes is what determined that male roles are oblique to take the financial burden of a family and in charge for any crisis. On the contrary, less social burdens are placed on the females so females are more concerned towards whether the job is interest or appeal to them or not(2019) .