Written By: Stephanie Hopfinger, WIlliam Schreer & Brynn McGowan
Pay Gap History- United States
Gender and racial pay gaps are not surprisingly linked to America’s history with labor. What is America’s history with black laborers? Slavery. Enslaved black people were exploited to further the economic growth of America. Slavery was followed by Jim Crow, segregation, mass incarceration, and the consistent policies that prohibited black Americans to access to financial opportunities. Policy makers prevented black women from obtaining good-paying jobs by requiring expensive licensing that were often financially inaccessible. This pushed freed black women into returning to work they did while enslaved. Today, we see remnants of this with 13% of all maids and service workers are black women. On average black women earn 62 cents on the dollar when compared to white men (Glynn, 2018). These gaps exist in most occupational fields. Even when comparing fields that are dominated by males, an equivalently skilled female dominated job still has a pay gap (Hegewisch,2014).
What factors are allowing pay gaps to exist?
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act banned discrimination of the basis of race, color, religions, sex, and national origin. This allowed the first steps for black women to enter higher paying jobs. But the data around gender and wages shows that once an occupation has too high a number of women, wages quickly decline. For centuries, women have done the bulk of the unpaid domestic labor which has permanently deemed women’s labor as inferior.
Solution to the pay gap?
The first solution to solving the pay gap is to find where the pay gaps are existing. Pay audits need to be done to monitor the differences in pay through racial and gender lenses. The equity of promotions, bonuses, and salaries all need to be monitored to begin solving this issue. Next wage disclosures should be made public and accessible. Transparency about wages will help future negotiations and keep the markets within occupational fields more even.
Next offering benefits such as family and medical leave to all employees equally regardless of gender. Paid leave for caregiving and personal medical reasons are supports that can address out-of-workplace gender and racial disparities. Hiring practices are also in need of being reformed. Employers need to strive for equitable practices through implicit bias training of management and HR members. Employers should also pledge to maintain diversity within upper-level management.
Pay Gap – Britain
The gender pay gap is not something new. It has been around for a long time. Although the disparity within the pay gap has been advancing towards equality for women to earn the same amount as men, society still has ways to go. Not only does gender put women behind men in the pay gap, but race contributes to the pay gap in Britain.
Black women are least likely to be top earners in society.
According to a study by the London School of Economics, black women are least likely in society to be among top earners in Britain. The study discovered that 1.3% of white men in the UK are in the top 1% of wage earners while less than 0.1% of UK-born black women are in the top wage earners. When analyzing pay over the past 17 years based on gender instead of race, researchers found 0.2% of UK-born white women are in the top 1%. This statistic is alarming and more people should be addressing this issue. The finding that black women are least likely to be top earners in Britain automatically makes black women have a disadvantage in their careers. No matter what social class they grew up in.
Women earning less than men is a systemic injustice.
Women earning less than men is a systemic injustice since men often earn more than women regardless of how well they perform their job. No matter if a black woman is from the UK or another country, she still has the lowest probability of being a top earner; this is an example of systemic racism because black women are the ones being affected the most by income disparity. Moreover, researchers sought to work out if discrepancies could be explained by black women taking up careers with lesser chances to be promoted, having greater childcare responsibilities than other women, working fewer hours, or having fewer educational qualifications. However, even after trying to control age, education, marital status, hours, and occupation, researchers found no substantial differences for black women.
What’s the Solution?
Even though society has made headway towards equal pay, this problem is not over yet. It will most likely take many years to make change and have an equal pay stick in the workforce. In order to fix this systemic injustice, pay gaps need to be talked about in order for there to be solutions to them. Businesses need to improve their diversity by hiring different races and genders. They also need to be transparent about pay and not dishonest about how much they pay the average white male employee. Most importantly, all women should have access to some type of female leadership course so they know how to stand up for themselves and their pay. In an ideal workforce, everyone would have an equal chance for being the top earner. By taking action as a society, we can work closer to achieving gender equal pay.
Why Intersectionality Matters…
The concept of Intersectionality deals with the idea that social categorizations such as age, gender, and race are interconnected and therefore need to be addressed together as opposed to separately. The concept was created by Kimberle Crenshaw as an acknowledgement that each individual has unique experiences with discrimination, so trying to solve an issue about one categorization without taking into account the other categories does little to solve the overall issue. The pay gap that exists in both the United States and Great Britain is an example of an injustice that intersects multiple categories. This results in the solution to the issue being much more complex, as a solution that may work for one group of people might impact another very little or even have an adverse effect.
Take the issues of racial and gender discrepancies in the workforce as an example. As shown above, the pay gap does not only exist within gender comparisons but is further disportioned when race is intersected. If each country’s respective governments choose to address the pay gap just between men and women, then the racial disparities are not taken into account.If gender inequality is only addressed the pay gap amongst white women and black women would likely be furthered. Women of color are affected most. A solution would need to address different intersectional facets.
Understanding that the pay gap is an intersectional injustice is vital. Racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia and many other forms of bias exist within the wage gap. For equitable pay to exist we must first be able to identify the variables of discrimination.
Let’s Sum It Up: Why Does the Pay Gap Exist?
It has been more than 50 years since the Equal Pay Act was enacted and nearly 50 since Title IX- so why is there still a huge inequality between men’s and women’s pay?
There are three main reasons for the pay gap
- Occupational Segregation
Stereotyping a woman’s skills and abilities results in women being in female dominated occupations. Female dominated occupations are often associated with low pay. Some of these occupations include cleaning, catering, administration, care, retail, etc. - Lack of flexible working
Many women experience discrimination and face disadvantages in their careers since they are more likely than men to care for children or older people. Not only do women face caretaker responsibilities, they can lose their job or miss out on pay if they are pregnant. Both of these situations lead to a lack of flexible working for women which means they have to look for part-time work to balance their life. Most part-time work is low paying which contributes to the gender pay gap. Part- time work also has a long-term damaging effect on women’s wages even if they return to full-time work. - Discrimination in pay and grading systems
There is widespread discrimination for the pay system in the workforce. Many women are paid less for the same work as their male coworkers. Although this difference in pay might not be intentional, there are problems within the pay system that lead to inequalities. An example includes women not receiving the same access to training as men.
The pay gap has always been, and continues to be, extremely prevalent in America and Great Britain because of the concept of the other. Those who are privileged enough to define one as an “other” have never been marginalized and therefore have no one to compare themselves to in a situation where they do not come out on top. Wages have always been set by white men because, throughout most of history, they were the only ones being paid for their labor. And even though many marginalized groups have gained more rights and increased wages, they still are not equitable to white males.