Naomi Barkos perspective of the wage gap due to gender differences - Essay Example

?Introduction The debate of inadequate pay for women in the industry has long held the spirit and motion of discussion rooms, corporate and government discussion forums. It has been more than one and a half centuries that the employment scenario has boomed and industry has bifurcated and diversified to create a myriad variety of jobs, roles and designations. The burning of issue of the latter half of 20th century i.e., Comparable Wages for Comparable Work for Women has still remained an area where much work can be done to close the gap and create a level playing ground for the female task force. The rest of the paper focuses on the secondary research based on Naomi Barko’s The Other Gender Gap exploring the modern 201st century dilemmas faced by women and the skewed monetary compensation for similar jobs with similar responsibility between women and men. Research has been done on the present situation of the wage gap in US in the last decade and the improvements made in the last 30 to 40 after the enforcement of equal wages act and the women’s movement in mid 20th century. Naomi Barko’s perspective of the wage gap due to gender differences Women are still considered as second grade custody workers in various job sectors. A decade ago in the US, women were still being paid low as compared to the men for the same job that they were doing. Women care takers and cleaners has a salary widely disparate form that of men and all because of gender difference. A salary gap of 8000 US dollars separated the women’s yearly income (22000 US Dollars) form the men’s yearly income (30000 US Dollars). (Barko 1) Even after 5 decades since the enforcement of the Equal Payment Act of 1963, American women earned 74 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to the study published jointly by the AFL-CIO and The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), Washington (Barko 1). An increase in the wages of women task force employed across different industry sectors and in different categories would bring more than 50 % of low income dual-earner and single-mother households above the poverty line. Recent study has challenged the age-old argument of lesser industry experience, child bearing time off and child rearing time off supporting low income of women stating that 43 % of wage gap remains unexplained. Secondary Research After the industrial revolution in the late 19th and early 20th century many new fields of work emerged and the professional world witnessed a boom. New posts were created, new organisations came into existence and new business lines became viable profit-making options. Niche became main-stream and options multiplied. Even in this abundance of organisation, roles and opportunities women generally were granted lower posts, lower income and less challenging roles. It’s only been a recent development that women are now being considered and granted equal professional status as their male counterparts. The change in perception of the job industry only changed in the last three decades with the industry stepping into the Silicon Age and the IT boom. IT industry, Media and Entertainment Industry, staffing and HR industry and even government service has matured to not only include women in their task force but grant them equal career levels as compared to men, challenging roles and better pay than earlier. Even after the women’s right movement worldwide and HR concept of inclusion, gender diversity and equality the gap hasn’t reduced significantly and statistics still remain the same “Women's earnings were 77.0 percent of men's in 2011, compared to 77.4 percent in 2010, according to Census statistics released September 12, 2012 based on the median earnings of all full-time, year-round workers. Men's earning in 2011 were $48,202 and women's were $37,118, a difference of $11,084.” (National Committee on Pay Equity 2012) Top employers in the Multi-national Corporation category in the software, manufacturing, consultancy and engineering industry have included women in almost all departments, levels and roles making it a level playing ground for both men and women. The problem of wage discrimination has been nearly eradicated from the industry after the “equal pay laws”. However there is a great myth surrounding the cause of the pay gap between men and women. It is not because of unequal pay for identical jobs. The cause for pay gap is not simple and more over cannot be pinpointed to one particular reason. There are many reasons why women are favoured over men for a certain type of job like: healthcare, receptionist, telephone exchange attendant, flight cabin crew, HR recruiter, interview panellist, host, journalist, interviewer etc. The human society has divided jobs into two categories that do justice to the long-understood, corroborated and confirmed capabilities of men and women. Men were found to be more capable in doing math and science related jobs apart from laborious and physically taxing jobs. Women on the other hand were believed to have better bonding, inter personal, and aesthetic sense and skills. This was the basis for segregation of jobs and depending on the criticality of the nature of jobs pay structure was created. Now in this case the pay structure happened to be lesser than a job of the same designation, but in a male dominated job type. For example a supervisor in nursing profession would get paid lesser than a ground supervisor in construction industry. This is still prevalent in the industry and wages have a wide disparity. Another problem is Sexism at work. In other words it refers to the gender orientation of certain roles. The industry situation is determined in college admission queues and counselling halls where women opt for Arts, humanities, nursing, medicine, mass communication, journalism etc instead of engineering, aeronautics, construction, management etc. Women tend to cluster into lower-paying fields. This insight is also a reason as to why there is a significant divide between women’s and men’s wages keeping the role and designation or for comparable jobs why aren’t there comparable wages for men and women. The skewed wages are due to this situation that start long before the academic youth enter the professional task force. Women working full time in the US typically earned 77 percent less than men. Over a period of 15 long years, as per a 2004 study by the IWPR, 52 percent of women in the prime earning age bracket of 26 to 59 go through 1 full year cycle of earning nothing compared to a mere 16 % of men (Fitzpatrick 2) These factors make a difference making the wage gap twice as large as the census figure. Female workers earn 38 % of what men make. According to the IWPR women with bachelor’s degree earn lesser than men with a high school diploma or less.(Fitzpatrick 2) Definite progress has been made in the recent years in President Obama’s first term when the first bill signed into law targeted the US pay gap. The Senate is still considering a bill that would be meant to address the underlying discrimination. (Fitzpatrick 1) There was a gap of 23 percent which by average standards based on any social criteria such as nationality, region, social status and other parameters is far above than normal. This gap has narrowed since the 1970s but is still a problem plaguing the women workforce in the US which needs to be eradicated form the roots. The gap has closed due to increased participation in courses like Education, Journalism, Media, Management, Public Services etc and due to the steadily decline rate of wage increases for men in US. (AAUW 3) Even in the year 2010 the figure representing the wage gap remained at 23 %. This number is an up from a gap of 41.2 % with women earning 58.8 % of what men earned in 1975. While pro-wage-gap theorists and researcher have argued that the wage gap is a product of life style choices, education choices and employment choices, “a rigorous analysis of data by labour economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that more than 40 % of the pay gap cannot be explained by such differences” (Separa 1) This was clear evidence that gender discrimination still exists. Gender pay gap is not just about economic fairness. It is also a latter of economic empowerment for working women as well as their families. Latest data pertinent to 2012 shows that the median full time working man took home 47, 715 US dollars while the median full time working woman made as low as 36, 931 US Dollars in earnings.(Glynn 1) The difference in annual pay amounted to 23.6%, or $10,784 less. (Glynn 1) Such a wide disparity existed due the unfinished task of workplace discrimination based on gender against women. The wide disparity in pay structure has still not been addressed by international forums like UN, EU, ASEAN and other international and regional social, economic and cultural organisations. This pay gap leads to a great economic disadvantage for women and their families, when nearly 2/3rd of women are either the sole breadwinner or a co-breadwinner (Glynn 1) earning at least 25 percent of the family’s income. The pay gaps starts as early as in college campus jobs. Men workers are paid slightly more than their female counterparts on the same designation serving the same role in the same organisation. Statistics show that women ear 5 percent less according of the American Association of University Women (Johnson 1) Another contemporary study this year shows that the wage gaps is still unresolved in the higher levels in an organisation. There is a significant widening in the wage gap over the course of a career journey. Another interesting statistic supporting Naomi Barko’s work on gender based wage gap is information filtered from 1.6 million user profiles, research firm “Today” reported. It showed that women’s earning plateau at 60,000 US dollars per annum on an average age 39, while men’s annual salaries continue growing until the age of 48 to as high as 95,000 US dollars. (Johnson 1) Research Organisation “Payscale.com” conducted many findings and all of them were not grim and hopeless. It indicated that young employed women within the age bracket of 22 to 30 surpassed men’s salary ranges. (Johnson 1). As high as 8 to 20 percent more annual income in urban areas was registered in the data collection done by “Payscale.com”, proving that women are poised to surpass men in terms of rate of increase of income in the early phases of professional lives. Conclusion The larger truth that still remains is that US has a wage gap. Both in the lowest and the highest tier of jobs (in terms of intellectually challenging nature, wage, rank in the hierarchy of jobs and income) there is a prevalent wage gap that can be convincingly explained by discrimination. However given the awakening and professional growth of the female taskforce in the US it seems to be the death cries of a highly skewed employment sector rather than a permanent establishment. Data also indicated that while the gender gap spanned across all professions and industries it was as low as 1 to 4 percent within some fields like Journalism, IT, Media, human Resources etc. The average gap is as high as 12 to 13 percent across all jobs (Johnson 1). It is still a truth that most women choose more maternal jobs that were critical to the healthy functioning and sustenance of a society but low paying. (Johnson 1)Women still do most of the child and old age care. The upper reaches of the society and professional world are male-dominated. A compelling, interesting and captivating study by University of Chicago sociologist Kirsten Schilt and NYU economist Matthew Wiswall examined the wage trajectories or people who underwent gender transformation or sex change. Men who became women after the surgery registered 32 percent less wages and those that transformed into men registered a growth in earnings of 1.5 %. (Johnson 1) A subconscious discriminatory attitude still prevails in the professional world, where capabilities are still judged on gender and women have to worker n-fold harder to get to where a man gets with ease. Much remains to be done to eradicate this subconscious favouritism based on gender and bring a balance in wages of men and women for comparable work. Works Cited 1. Naomi Barko. “The Other Gender Gap”. The American Prospect. 30 Nov. 2000. Web 11 Nov. 2012. Retrieved From : http://prospect.org/article/other-gender-gap 2. National Committee on Pay Equity.”Wage Gap Statistically Unchanged and Still Stagnant”. 25 Nov. 2012. Web 25 Nov. 2012. Retrieved From: http://www.pay-equity.org/ 3. Ramesh Ponnuru. “Don’t Blame Discrimination for Gender Wage Gap”. Bloomberg. 14 Aug. 2012. Web. 12 Nov 2012. Retrieved From: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-13/don-t-blame-discrimination-for-gender-wage-gap.html 4. AAUW. “Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap” AAUW – Breaking Through Barriers for Women and Girls. 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. Retrieved From: http://www.aauw.org/learn/research/simpleTruth.cfm 5. Matt Separa. “See What Inequity in Earnings Costs Women and Their Families Each Year and Over Their Lifetimes ” Center for American Progress. Infographic: The Gender Pay Gap. 16 Apr 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. Retrieved From: cottoncandy.com 6. Sarah Jane Glynn. “The Gender Wage Gap Double Whammy Lower Pay and Lack of Paid Leave Slams Working Women”. Center for American Progress. 16 Apr. 2012. Web 12 Nov. 2012. Retrieved From: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/news/2012/04/16/11428/the-gender-wage-gap-double-whammy/ 7. Margaret Wheeler Johnson. “Gender Gap Expands As Men And Women Age, Data Shows”. Huffington Post. 5 2012 Jun. Web 12 Nov. 2012. Retrieved From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/gender-gap-expands_n_1569168.html 8. Laura Fitzpatrick. “Why Do Women Still Earn Less Than Men?” Time US. 20 Apr. 2012. Web 12 Nov. 2012. Retrieved From: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.html Read More