Women are prone to face injustices in our society. Women had to fight for everything since the beginning of this country. Women fought for their basic rights such as voting rights; they face discrimination in almost every field such as access to education, wage structure in the workforce, representation in congress. A widespread issue is the rising wage gap between men and women. Women are discriminated in the workforce based on their gender and are paid less for their work than men for the same amount of work and effort. A prominent example of such incident was the lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation by the USWNT members who sought a fair wage structure for women and men athletes. Their lawsuit argues that women athletes are being paid much less than the male athletes for the same game they play. The lawsuit states that “the USSF has never offered female WNT players pay at least equal to the pay afforded to male MNT players”(Kaplan 2019). According to ESPN, the issue of women being underpaid due to their gender has also spilled into Hockey which spurred a controversy in 2017, when the US women’s hockey team threatened a boycott as a protest to support fair wages. Not only in sports, but such discrimination exists in other occupations as well. According to Business Insider, “As of 2018, a woman on average earned 81.6 cents for every dollar a man earns, and women’s median annual earnings are $9,766 less than men’s”(Wolfe 2019). The article claims that on combination of identities such as African American women, Latino women make less than white women and almost half of what white males earn for the same job. The widening wage gap is a huge issue to tackle as it will have serious implications in the growing society. For example, “In Louisiana, for instance, the gender pay gap is 31%, the largest wage gap in the nation”(Wolfe 2019). Widening wage gap and discrimination against women in the workforce is a symbolic expression that portrays a negative image that men are more important and valuable than women. Such negative and unethical ideology has the tendency to pass through children since they observe these vivid differences between men and women in our society. Not only the wage gap in the workforce, but women are vulnerable to harassment from colleagues in the place of employment. According to the United States EEOC’s report, “Of these charges, women filed 19,605, or 74.4 percent. The issues most frequently alleged in these charges were discharge, harassment, and sexual harassment”( Women in the American Workforce). Such incidents damage the psychological well-being of women and strike fear of being part of the workforce. To help women who are part of the workforce, congress should take steps to provide a safe working environment for women which treats everyone equally, pays wages fairly with no discrimination based on race or gender.
Kaplan, Emily. “U.S. Women’s Soccer Equal Pay Fight: What’s the Latest, and What’s next?” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 9 Nov. 2019, www.espn.com/sports/soccer/story/_/id/27175927/us-women-soccer-equal-pay-fight-latest-next.
Wolfe, Lahle. Unequal Pay Is a Form Of Gender Discrimination. 27 Jan. 2019, www.thebalancecareers.com/gender-discrimination-in-the-workplace-3515145.
“Women in the American Workforce.” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, www.eeoc.gov/special-report/women-american-workforce.
It remains important when discussing this issue to go in depth on ways in which women can be missing out in terms of compensation. In terms of a salaried position at a company or a per-hour wage position, the disparities between the pay of men and women is no longer structural-they are systemic. The 1968 Equal Pay Act prevented the blatant discrimination on gender in the form of wages, but most wage discrimination that happens today is far harder to spot, and it involves mainly lost time. Often women lose a significant portion of their pay for things such as maternity leave and other medical issues, and while one can make the argument that employers are not obligated to pay for lost time from personal decisions, the wage gap as we know it today owes its existence to primarily lost working time rather than explicit differences in pay per year or hour.
In the current society, it is still a fact that there are some discrimination and stereotype to woman in some areas of work fields. Women are brave enough and continuously fighting for their equality in rights as man. There are systemic injustice to woman comparing to man in salaries and some other cases and areas, but I think woman’s social status is far better than that in the past. In this trend, one day man and woman will reach the complete equality and we should all fight for it.
Nowadays, people say there are much less sexism and segregation these days. However, as you mention in the article, many of them are still in these days as you showed the graph. These salary differences have to be considered with women having to take care of children, but I still believe there are some inequities towards women. But this is much better than the past.
Although the status of women is constantly getting higher and gender discrimination is gradually disappearing, adjustments against women in the workplace still exist. In many jobs, the ratio of men to women is very out of balance. But what I want to say is that at present, more and more women have proved their abilities through their own efforts, and I also believe that such injustices will gradually disappear under the joint efforts of everyone.
This society still has more demanding requirements for women. For example, when a woman is interviewing, the interviewer will ask, “Are you in a relationship?” “Are you married”, and “Do you have children?” These are some of the questions for women. They believe that these are issues that will affect women’s work efficiency. Then we should know that none of these problems can be done by a woman alone, but by a man and a woman. But now this society naturally classifies these responsibilities to women, and we should all work hard for equality between men and women.
I really like this post, as it is similar to what I also talked about. In one of my business classes we spent a week talking about how there are many biases against women in the workplace. We also talked about how women get promoted at a much lower rate than men, while still being hired at around the same rate. For whatever reason there is a serious lack of female corporate leadership. Companies with more gender diversity tend to do much better than those who don’t, so it should be beneficial for companies to promote woman at an equal rate as men.
I really like this topic and I agree that women are underpaid in many fields of work. However, I thought the examples you used could have been better. You bring up the women’s US women’s soccer team and hockey team, while they are better than the men’s teams (most of the time), that does not mean that they bring in the same profits as the men’s team. More fans tend to go to men’s sporting events, which in result brings in more money for the men’s team. If you were a business, would you pay your employee’s more when they are not bringing in any more money? While your argument is very valid in the business world (engineers, doctors, and many other fields), I do not believe it is very valid in the sporting world.