Cody Mason
Professor Mayer
Work and Leisure
24 November 2018
Inequality
The gender pay gap is the gap between how much men and women are paid in the
workforce. Most commonly, it refers to the median annual pay of all women who work full time
and year-round, compared to the pay of a similar male worker. Other estimates of the gender pay
gap are based on the weekly or hourly earnings of women, while some are specific to a particular
group of women.
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I will discuss the problems with the wage gap and what can be done about it. I
will also propose ways that the wage gap can be fixed. There are many approaches to eliminating
the wage gap, such as raising minimum wage and creating a paid family and medical leave
insurance policy, which would in turn help to decrease the inequality in pay between men and
women.
There are many different problems with the gender wage gap. A major problem is that
some mothers are single mothers because of death of a spouse or a divorce. With them being the
only parent trying or able to provide for the kid/s, they might struggle because they will not make
as much as they should to support their family, only because they are a female. Their kids will
then struggle because they will not have what they need to succeed. They will have to work a lot
harder to get what they want. If you are a female, you might be getting paid less than the average
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The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap.” AAUW: Empowering Women Since 1881. Accessed November 16,
2018. https://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/
male completing the same job. Pay inequality is also a family issue, not just an issue for the
women. In modern households, women are responsible for earning money to support their
families and may even make more money than their male spouse.
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Women could potentially
struggle to provide necessities for their family based on the wage gap between men and women.
Another unnoticeable problem is the fact that people do not see what happens at home
between married couple. If the male brings home the most money and provides the most support
for the family, he may feel he has power over the woman. He will then try to boss around the
woman. The gender wage gap is affected because in the past the women were expected to do
everything around the house. Then, when they began to enter the workforce, they only had a
certain amount of skills, so they were selective for what jobs they were able to complete.
Finding a solution for the gender wage gap will be hard, but there are ways to reduce it.
After a while of reducing it, there is a chance that it could be completely eliminated from our
society. When doing my research, I found many ways that could help fix the problem. A few of
