Thinking …: Gender Lesson 7: Inequality, work and women

Women are paid less

Sociologists have studied women’s income compared to men, and by making many different comparisons, women are paid less (about 80 percent) than men.

The level of education and work experience of women has increased significantly over the last four decades. Women make up more than half of college graduates and almost half of the workforce, and families depend on women for income. However, women are still paid less than men. More than half a century after the adoption of the Equal Pay Act (EPA), in 2017, a full-time full-time woman was typically paid just 80 cents for every dollar paid to a full-time full-time man. The pay gap between women and men varies by race and is higher for most colored groups of women: nationally, blacks, indigenous women, and Latin women working full-time typically earned only 61 cents, 58 cents, and 53 cents throughout the year. respectively, for every dollar paid to their non-Hispanic white counterparts and 77 cents to non-Hispanic white women, 77 cents were paid for every dollar paid to non-Hispanic white men. Asian women who work full-time throughout the year typically earn 85 cents per dollar for white non-Hispanic men, but the pay gap in some Asian women’s communities is much larger. The gender pay gap persists in all 50 states and in almost all occupations. There is also a large pay gap between mothers and fathers, LGBTQ women versus men, and women with disabilities versus men with disabilities.

Skepticism about the pay gap suggests that it is due to different levels of education or the types of jobs women choose. However, research shows that at the very beginning of a woman’s career, just a year after graduating from college, full-time women were paid only 82% of what their fellow men earned, and we know that the pay gap is widening over time. For women in general, even taking into account factors such as trade union status, education, occupation, industry, work experience, region and race, 38% of the pay gap remains unexplained. The data clearly show that discrimination based on conscious and unconscious stereotypes is the root cause of this inexplicable gap. A recent experiment revealed e.g.it is enough that when they were given identical CVs, one named John and the other named Jennifer, a research professor, offered the man a candidate for the position of head of the laboratory a salary of almost $ 4,000, additional career mentoring, and rated it as very good. more competent and recruited. When women lose income as a result of discrimination, families and the economy suffer.

3. Do women get a lower salary because they usually have a lower level of education than men after reading the above passage?

Women earn about 80% of what men earn, and women earn less compared to men with similar education at all levels. Based on the 2014 according to the census, this applies to all levels of income and education; from poor women to women with professional degrees. The same is true for women working immediately after graduation compared to their male groups. This is true of single households run by women compared to men. (Ferris and Stein)

The National Center for Women’s Rights has published this report, which shows that

Women who work full-time throughout the year in the United States were paid only 82 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts in 2018. For many groups of women, the difference is even greater. This document provides detailed information on the pay gap measure used by the Census Bureau and the National Center for Women’s Rights (NWLC), the factors contributing to the pay gap, and how to close it.

4. Are women paid the same income as men when they graduate from college, but the pay gap becomes apparent when they have children?

The more women work in the industry, the less paid those jobs are. Examine the graph below and answer the question.

The graph above shows jobs by gender (women’s left and men’s right) and the pay gap (up or down). The X axis is equal pay. Red lines up indicate that men earn more than women, and black lines down indicate that women earn more than men. Note the relatively smaller pay gap for work that is considered female (left) compared to predominantly male occupations (right).

This chart shows women’s work (purple) versus men’s work (yellow). The red line is the pay gap for the same types of jobs. Note that women’s jobs on the left are less paid (y-axis) than men’s jobs on the right.

In the image above, the purple circles show the number of women in a particular profession and the yellow circles the number of men. The red line indicates the pay gap.

6. What is the difference between women’s and men’s pay?

These diagrams show that between 1960 and 2015 jobs with a predominance of women (far left) did not increase nearly as much as jobs with a predominance of men (far right). And for jobs that have become more female (2 left), wages have fallen for men. In other words, work that is perceived as feminine is paid less.

And the more feminine the industry, the less money that area earns.

Although women earn more education than men, they earn less money than men, whether they graduated from college or not, and no matter how old they are.

This chart takes into account the idea that women work part-time and therefore earn less than men. Remember that part-time women actually earn more than part-time men. However, most women work full time or longer but earn less than men.

This version of Forbes criticizes the idea that women are paid less for the same work than men in the same position, but even this version acknowledges that

Of course, this does not close the debate on sexism. For example, it is important to ask why women may be less ambitious in asking for higher salaries or higher grants and why they choose, for example, pediatrics rather than orthopedic surgery. It is possible that gender discrimination contributes significantly to all this.

For more information, see Chapter 12.2 of the Open Stax Handbook Introduction to Sociology (2019):

Evidence of gender stratification is particularly important in the economic field. Despite accounting for nearly half (49.8 percent) of all payroll, men are far more likely than women to work in authoritative, powerful, and therefore high-paying jobs (US Census Bureau 2010). Even when a woman’s employment status is equal to that of a man, she typically earns only 77 cents for every dollar her husband’s colleague earns (US Census Bureau 2010). Women in the paid workforce also still do most of the unpaid work at home. On average, 84 percent of women (compared to 67 percent of men) spend time doing housekeeping activities per day (US Census Bureau 2011). Because of this dual role, working women play a secondary role in family structure (Hochschild and Machung 1989).

• Wages increase with age, and the gender pay gap also widens
• Education does not close the gender pay gap
• Location plays a huge role in determining the gender pay gap

7. Does this prove that there is a difference between the income of women and men? What else would you like to know if there is anything you still doubt?




Inequality also means different treatment of women and men at work.

• Here is a report on efforts to replace women in Ernst and Young (2018).

“When women talk, they shouldn’t be loud. Clothes should be smoother, but short skirts should not. After all, “sexuality erodes thoughts.” Women should look healthy and beautiful, with “well-trimmed” and “tidy nails.”

• These were just a few of the tips that approximately 30 Ernst & Young women executives received during the 2018 training. June at the glowing office of an accounting giant in Hoboken, New Jersey.
• One example of the inequality that affects an engineer’s approach to the technology industry is Kara Swisher’s report on the Engineer Manifesto (2017).
• The Harvard Business Review conducted a study that the difference in promotion rates between men and women in this company was twoe not to their behavior, but to the way they were treated. This shows that … Gender inequality is caused by bias, not differences in behavior.

Women and unpaid work

From NY Times Upshot (2019)

9. How has this lesson affected your understanding of the impact of gender on income and work? What specifically memorized you?