Research paper

Gender Pay Gap

The ideology of equal employment opportunity in the United States between men and women has been gaining popularity in the past several decades. The 20th century is an example of a period where the number of women gaining employment in the US records increased. As equality in the work place gains an establishment, the gap in pay remains uneven. There are figures in the US with data that stipulates the rate of income earnings from women and men as one dollar to eighty one cents (0.81/1). This information indicates a gap in payments of women and women all over the nation regardless of their occupation. The aim of this paper is to examine feasible strategies that the US government can use to bridge the gender pay gap that is clearly an issue of concern for women in the employment fields.

The gender pay gap for males and females with a similar training background and with an employment within the same career field is even higher than the 0.81/1 dollar estimation. An accurate comparison of individuals working in the same occupation with a similar expertise have an unaccountable difference of 5% during the time of employment. The gender pay reflects an instance of bias payment methods by employers despite giving women equal employment opportunity. The gender pay gap increases drastically up to 12% for individuals who begin their employment at the same time with the mentioned conditions over the next ten years.

The false notion of equality in the working environments in the United States is therefore, not what it should be. The fight to achieve equality in the United States business world continues with a closer examination of the gender pay gap. In the process of bridging the gender pay gap, it is essential to understand the role the employers play in the private and public sector that results into the divergence between the pay of women and men. The existing gender pay gap is because of several factors within the economic sector. These factors include occupational segregation, socio-demographic attributes, economic gender discrimination, and human capital resources. The factors have an impact on the gender pay gap in varying proportions in the private and public sector. The private sector has lesser gender pay gaps from gender economic discrimination in comparison to the public sector. The dominant factor causing a gender pay gap in the private sector is the difference in working hours between the male and female employees.

The factor on occupational segregation causes gender pay gap when women and men receive varying duties to perform in their workplace. The varying functions attract different wages, which reflect on the gender pay gap and eventually put women at a disadvantage. Sociodemographic attributes also result to an increased variance in the wage gap in the working genders. Social changes in the economic sector have enabled the empowerment of women in the United States, which continues to reduce the gender pay gap.

Economic gender discrimination in reference to the United States tracking of the working society, women and men gravitationally drift to traditional roles set by society. The women in the United States are directed into secretarial jobs, personal assistant jobs and middle school teachers while the men enter into executive and administrative roles. This information is based on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The human capital resource provides a model that compares men’s productivity to that of women in relation to their potential and lifetime expected for each to be in the economic sector. The earnings of people according to the human capital model keep on increasing over the years and due to some instances in women’s working life such as pregnancies a wage gap slowly develops. The divergence of male and female wages in the US has been decreasing over the recent years and some traditional norms which hindered women’s prosperity in the working place become extinct.

In the present time, women get involved in executive roles in the economic sector earning more income than their male counterparts which contributes to the establishment of a balance in wage disparity. Economic discrimination has also been reducing as occupations in the US continue to be equally availed to both women and men. The increase in numbers of women to the male dominated industries is a positive action for the bridging of the gender pay gap. The factor of human capital resources responsible for this shift is the increase in academic achievements of women in various fields of the economy.

The gender pay gap is yet to be completely closed in the economy of the United States but measures being implemented are effectively contributing to its reduction. Equal employment opportunities require a complete closure of the gender pay gap for the sake of acquiring total equality. The public sector provides a realm for equal wage provisions in both genders with application of bureaucratic policies that recruit equal numbers of women into the male dominated industries and allocate work rewards fairly based on Reese et al (2012). Promotions in the work place are also based on merits and such collaborative efforts will eventually yield a wage balance for each gender.

References

Barón, Juan D., and DEBORAH A. COBB‐CLARK. "Occupational segregation and the gender wage gap in private‐and public‐sector employment: a distributional analysis." Economic Record 86.273 (2010): 227-246.

Reese, Catherine C., and Barbara Warner. "Pay equity in the states: An analysis of the gender–pay gap in the public sector." Review of Public Personnel Administration 32.4 (2012): 312-331.