Gender Pay Gap

Gender Pay Gap

Women make up almost fifty percent of the workforce in the United States. However, they continue to earn less than their male counterparts. The gap persists even among women that do the same jobs as men. According to National Partnership for Women & Families, the median pay per year in the United States for a woman who has a full-time job is $45,097 while that of a man who holds a full-time job is $55,291. In general, this implies that women in the United States earn only 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. This translates to an annual gender pay gap of $10,194. This pervasive and persistent pay gap is partly driven by racial and gender discrimination, job segregation, inadequate workplace policies to support family caregiving, which is still primarily performed by women, and workplace harassment. These cultural and social norms and unconscious bias continue to drive the gender pay gap, which results in notably lost wages that add up over the lifetime of women. This leads to consistent gender inequality, which impedes economic growth and human development. Although the pay gap has shrunk since the 1960s due to women’s progress in labor market participation and education and men’s pay rising at slower rates, at the rate between 1960s and 2015, women are expected to catch up with men in 2059 (Ho 4). However, even the slow progress in women’s pay has slowed down in recent years. If the slow growth in women’s pay continues, women will not attain wage equity with men until 2152. That being said, the persistent and pervasive pay gap between women and men leads to adverse effects on women’s mental and physical health, increased rates of poverty, and adversely hurts productivity at work. This paper will delve deeper into the adverse impacts of women’s pay gap and present arguments against equal pay for men and women.

There is a strong link between wage discrepancies and issues with physical and mental health. Researchers analyzed over 22,500 American adults. They discovered that women who earned low incomes than men with similar jobs, experience, family circumstances, age, and education were almost 2.5 times more likely than other women to be depressed and four times more likely to suffer from anxiety (Bishu and Alkadry 53). Some of the disparities in anxiety and depression with regard to gender are caused by structural gender inequality in the workplace and society. The processes in society that place women in certain types of employment, pay them less than their male counterparts, and create gender inequality in domestic labor have both psychological and material consequences.

The gender pay gap is not only disadvantageous to women as it affects everyone. This is because the wage gap leads to poverty. Despite earning less than their male counterparts, women’s earnings are essential to households’ economic stability. Almost 50 percent of families with children under the age of 18 in the United States have a female breadwinner. The female breadwinner is either a married woman who contributes at least 40 percent of the household’s earnings or a single mother who is the sole breadwinner (Upali 341). Even women with no children are employed to support other members of the family and themselves. Therefore, the persistent wage gap for employed women leads to lower wages, low household incomes, and more families and children in poverty. Women cannot achieve economic stability if their pay is not equal to that of men. For example, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, the rate of poverty among employed women would decline from about 8 percent to 3.8 percent. This positively impacts children too. For instance, the 5.6 million children trapped in poverty today, about 2.5 million, would come out of poverty if the gender pay gap is bridged (Institute for Women’s Policy Research).

The gender pay gap also hurts productivity in organizations. Everything else being equal gender wage gap negatively affects productivity. Therefore, bridging the wage gap between female and male employees would not only lead to equality but increase the long-term productivity of organizations. Equal pay for men and women results in high productivity by enabling organizations to attract and retain talented employees (Ortiz-Ospina and Roser). Moreover, parity in wages creates incentives for employees to maximize their efforts regardless of their gender.

Despite the benefits of having gender wage parity, there are many critics of gender wage parity. One of the arguments is that women are not primary income earners for households and that women are paid less because of this notion. However, this is a misguided view of the gender wage gap. As mentioned above, about 40 percent of women are primary breadwinners. Moreover, over 75 percent of single mothers are the sole source of income for their households (National Partnership for Women & Families). The primary breadwinner claim also should not be an excuse for disparities in wages at work. If men and women are working the same jobs, have a similar experience, education, and work equal hours, they should have fair wages without regard to who is the primary breadwinner.

Another argument against equal pay for men and women is that if women want higher wages, they should choose careers that pay more. This argument does not hold up because, as mentioned earlier, even women that do the same jobs, have a similar experience as men, and work an equal number of hours do not earn the same wages as their male counterparts (National Partnership for Women & Families). Also, women today are choosing careers that were predominantly held by men. However, society still needs jobs that are mostly held by women, such as nursing, librarians, and secretaries. Nevertheless, men and women should have the right to be in any career they desire and be confident that their wages will be fair for the job they do. To eliminate the gender wage gap across occupations, it is estimated that about 60 percent of all men and women would have to change professions to the ones dominated by the opposite gender.

In conclusion, the persistent and pervasive pay gap between women and men continues to exist in societies around the world. Women are not receiving equal pay, and this wage disparity has far-reaching consequences. It leads to poverty and hurts women’s mental and physical health and productivity in organizations.  The current economic conditions make it crucial than ever to ensure that there is gender wage parity. Also, many women today are the sole breadwinner and make more contributions to household incomes. For this reason, equal pay for women benefits the whole economy and helps in alleviating poverty.