The gender pay gap is an issue we need to focus on, but before discussing that topic, we have to see why it is important for women to be able to have equal pay. Let's take a look at the reasons and we'll see why women should be given incentives to stay in the workforce.
First of all, there are currently higher numbers of women in college than men: 56.4 percent of the fall enrollment numbers in 2008, at public universities, consisted of women. Also, American women born in the early 80s are 33 percent more likely to have a college degree by the time they are 27.
This means that there is a larger pool of educated women to select from for employment. In 2010, women accounted for 47 percent of the U.S. workforce, and when it came to high paying management positions, women accounted for 51 percent of the workforce. For instance, 63 percent of women made up the field of education administrators.
Thus, as women are receiving education, they should be paid the same in the positions which tend to be occupied by men. In reality, this does not happen. Male surgeons make much more money than female ones, with the females earning only 71 percent of what their male counterparts do, for example. This is very discriminatory considering that all other factors such as years of education and training can be assumed to be the same for both.
Salary is one of the many motivations needed to keep smart women in the workforce. If the educated population consists of more women, for the betterment of society, educated women should be given incentives to stay at work.
If the female is the better candidate for a job, she should be the one chosen for the job, as she is the more productive one regardless of her other commitments. When women have children and rejoin the work force a few years later, that absence in order to raise their next generation is held against them. However, when both men and women come out of school, they start at roughly the same amount. Policies could be introduced to help mothers out to ensure they can take care of their children when they are sick and hence work from home on those days or take them off. Currently, women’s commitment to their families is held against them.
Other solutions include making a company’s pay available to everyone. By ensuring this, the large gap -- women make $0.79 for every $1 a man makes) -- might be decreased. Companies will not want to appear discriminatory toward the female population because their public reputations would then take a hit. They will also not be able to argue that women are poor negotiators and hence, do not warrant raises. This comes back to the old argument of women seeming petty when they negotiate and men seeming assertive when they do. Hence, women lose their reputations when asking for a raise while men more often than not gain what they want. Perhaps certain positions having fixed nonnegotiable salaries is the way to move forward.
This is something which needs to be addressed because it is a question of equality. Why should one gender, for doing as much work as the other, be paid less, although they take on the same number of student loans for a degree, and tuition keeps increasing?
In the old days, the women would stay at home and hold the fort down. While the idea is seemingly gone in the public view, it still exists within the minds of quite a few individuals as the gender pay gap suggests; the way forward away from discrimination is by forcing an ideology. Once steps toward equal pay start yielding results, women will finally be given the respect they deserve in the workforce, which their male counterparts do not have to ask for.
