The Wage Gap

Female and Male Wage Gap: Analysis

Putting aside all gender stereotypes and roles, one of the major political topic of controversy is the gender gap. According to Dictionary.com, a “gender gap” is can be described as “the differences between women and men, especially as reflected insocial, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes.” Briefly summarized, this means that some people have better opportunities socially and economically based on their gender. According to The World Economic Forum, the United States ranks 45 out of 144 countries in terms of gender equality. Top ranked countries include Iceland at number 1, Finland at number 2, and Norway at number 3. At the bottom of the list, Syria ranks 142, Pakistan ranks 143, and Yemen ranks 144. As was stated previously, this takes into consideration health care, social status/opportunities and financial success (of course, more factors are taken into consideration but these are the main three). However, as far as this paper goes, the focus will be on the gender wage gap in the United States.

The “Gender Wage Gap,” as defined by Cambridge Dictionary is “the differences between amounts of money paid to women and men, often for doing the same work.” According to a study done by the American Association of University Women in 2015, women, on average, “typically were paid just 80 percent of what men were paid.” From statics like this, some economists argue that this is clear evidence of sexism in the work place and women are being discriminated against because they are women. Although it cannot be argued that women in the workplace were discriminated against all the way into the 1980’s, it can be argued that the gender wage gap, as being described by the AAUW and the New York Times is a myth and here is why. According to Claudia Goldin, an Economics Professor at Harvard University, “the gap is due mostly to choices men and women make in their careers and not discrimination” and, furthermore that the “smoking-gun” variable that was previously chalked up to discrimination, is better described “in the careers that women take, the hours they work and the time off they take.”

Furthermore, according to former Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos, “the gender wage gap theory is based on a misunderstanding between wages and earnings.” He goes on to say that “if you add up all the money that women make, and all the money that men make, there is a clear difference in the amount of money men make verses how much money women make.” This is where the difference between wages and earnings come into play. According to Milo (whose points are unknowingly backed up by the AAUW), a wage gap exists not because women are being payed less for doing the same job (wages) but because “women and men tend to make different life choices when they get out of college.”  In a study done by the University of Washington, women only make up about 37% of the total stem graduates per year and even less end up pursuing a career in stem fields.

PBS in an article entitled “Why the Stem Gap is Overblown” half-heartedly tried to debunk this claim (in a less informative more headline “clickbait” fashion) where it says that “men do not outnumber women in stem fields” but later admits that “men outnumber women in 3 out of the 5 major stem fields.” They then try to blame this stem gap on sexism stating that some men “think women just do not have what it takes to succeed in the hard sciences.” The University of Washington, the US Department of Commerce, Catalyist.org, Harvard University, and US News have debunked the claim of sexism being the cause of the wage gap (especially in stem majors). Keeping in mind that it is an undisputed fact that people who graduate college with STEM degrees tend to earn more money (annually) then people who do not, it can clearly be seen that women are not being payed less than men for doing the same jobs. The truth of the matter is that women “make different life choices than men” and tend to end up in fields or possitions where they do not make as much money. Furthermore, the yearly statistics of yearly earnings of men and women do not take into consideration time off or hours worked. The numbers used to determine that there was a gender wage gap were developed based on the assumption that men and women in the same fields were working the same hours and had the same amount of time off for pregnancies and things of that nature

In conclusion, from all the information presented, the “gender wage gap” does not exist because of sexism or inequality in pay. It exists because men and women make different life choices in career and family that creates a gap in yearly earnings. I am not saying there are not a very small percentage of cases where sexism plays a role in how much a women makes verses how much a man makes, but what I am saying is that a great majority of the time, women and men are payed equal for working the same jobs. On a different note, I’d love to hear feedback on my analysis and welcome any other information that I may have missed while I was Googling.

 

Works Cited