

Gender Equity: Equal Pay And Childcare

1043 words - 4 pages

Gender Equity: Equal Pay and ChildcareFour or five decades ago, as we can see in "Taking Women Students Seriously" by Adrienne Rich, women began to be aware of the feminism issues and started to fight over and ask for the true gender equity. Half a century later today, men and women have seemingly declared a cease-fire in the war that raged between the sexes, with more men taking their share of domestic duties and more professional women working outside the house. This seems to be a new world of both sexes. But is what we see really what we get?Despite that more and more aggressive career women are working relentlessly in the field, with the same education background and working experience, the ratio of male and female senior and executive management positions within organizations is still uneven. Most top management positions in the health care industry and in academic fields, for example, are held by men, while the majority of the working staff may be women. Have we finally progressed to true gender equity or there is still a long way to go?Take a 25-year-old woman entering the work force. If she stays at her same job full-time for the next 40 years, she stands to lose more than half a million dollars. How could she make up the loss? It would not be easy - she would have to be a man. Women in the workplace have come a long way since 1963, when President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, in which wage discrimination issues began to be addressed. A year later, the passage of the Civil Rights Act included employment language that banned wagebased discrimination against women and minorities. Today, however, most women still earn less than men.The weekly earnings in 1998 for women age 25 and older and employed full time were 76 percent of men's earnings. Such reports have largely contributed to the widely held belief of a "gender gap," or economic discrimination against women in all professions. Even though, for instance, the percentage of lawyers and judges who are women doubled to 29 percent between 1983 and 1996, while the percentage of female physicians increased from 16 to 26 percent, the majorities of these professional careers are still in men's power. Why is it then, we must ask, that with the same education background and same working experience, females always have less chance when it comes to career advancement, wage promotions, and hiring new employees? The pay for women, especially women of color, continues to lag behind their white counterparts.Another thing to look at for evidence of the unbalanced gender issues lies in the distribution of domestic duties. According to a new national survey conducted by Washington Post 1998, most men in the poll said they were happy to share child care and domestic chores with wives who work outside the home. Yet household duties remain sharply divided along gender lines. Working mothers still do twice as much housework as their husbands, and more than half of all women questioned expressed at...

Find Another Essay On Gender Equity: Equal Pay and Childcare

Drawing on both expectancy and equity theory, identify and discuss the main factors that are likely to influence the effectiveness of performance-related pay schemes in organisations

1165 words - 5 pages .435). Employees make comparisons of their job inputs (such as effort, experience and education) and outcomes (such as salary levels, speed of promotion and recognition) to relative to those of others (Robbins, p.168). Equity theory based on exchange theory. People expect certain outcomes in exchange for certain inputs. For example, a person may expect a significant pay rise as a contribution for his effort, which helped to achieve important

Gender Gap In Pay Essay

1998 words - 8 pages (Victoria, 2006). On the other hand, jobs like clerical tasks and childcare, which are dominated by women, offer lower pay. Such factors will obviously lead to a high gender pay difference (Blau & Kahn, 2007). Discrimination has also been attributed to be a factor in the gender pay difference. This happens where men earn higher on the same job position as compared to women. For instance, a research carried out by AAUW, which is women’s empowerment

The Cost of Childcare

1717 words - 7 pages be known. If they were publically known more families would not have to struggle to pay for the cost of childcare. The costs of childcare rising still have no one to blame. Americans will still struggle to use childcare until someone step in and change the government subsidy laws and make them equal to everyone. Works Cited Aguilar, Alexa. "Working Parents Struggle with Costs of Child Care." Chicago Tribune. N.p., 05 Oct. 2011. Web. 11 Nov

The Cost of Childcare

1980 words - 8 pages education” (Conley). This program is another option for the pre-k program. The cost of childcare has risen dramatically over the past year, and no one really knows whom to blame for it. The government offers families subsidies for childcare, but that is only if your income is low. But, what about the hard working, middle class families, that are still struggling to pay the high cost of childcare without government assistant? How will they provide


455 words - 2 pages , of whom 90% are female, can entail difficulties of, rarely adequate, maintenance enforcement (Glendinning: 1992). Loan parents are typically unable to meet childcare costs to enable availability for full time employment, leading to NI disqualification and a lack of incentive to work as childcare costs can equal income making state benefits preferential (Brown: 1983).Diminutive savings by retirement are a consequence of the culmination of gender

A womans struggle in the work force

1297 words - 5 pages women are paid more, but because men's earnings have dropped as highly paid manufacturing jobs have disappeared (Papalia, 440). Today, even with equal pay laws in place for over fifty years, now, we still have not completely closed the wage gap. It is difficult to determine precisely how much of the difference in female/ male pay is due to discrimination and how much is due to differences in choice preferences between women and men. However, the

The Relation Between Gender Equality and Economic Growth

3772 words - 15 pages treatment based on gender are not in conformity with the principles of democracy. (Löfström 2009, p. 29) Equal treatment belongs between EU´s founding values. In 1957 the principle of equal pay for equal work was established in the Treaty of Rome. EU accepts the positive effect of gender equality on the rise of GDP, it implements Equal treatment legislation and promote gender mainstreaming and specific measures for the advancement of women. The

Changing roles in the family structure


Equal Wage

1106 words - 4 pages Despite the fact that the Equal Pay Act has been law since 1963, many problems inevitably arise in the administration of equal pay laws (Fisher). It has been estimated that at this current slow rate of progression in closing the gender pay gap it will be 2068 by the time men and women’s wages are equalized. It is clear that the business case, as well as the legislative case, has a significant role to play (Commission Policy Report). There are

Sexual Inequality in the Workforce

4909 words - 20 pages . Moreover, they suggest that all women and men are so blind to this pattern of stereotypical expectations that, they often unconsciously discount and devalue the achievements of women. In some countries, the attempt to reimburse women and men equally for their work has led to a refinement of the concept of pay equity to mean, not just equal pay for equal work, but equal pay for work of equal value (also referred to as comparable worth

Working Women

1582 words - 6 pages comes to this “positive discrimination”. However, until equality is completely and securely established, there is still a need for policies like Affirmative Action. However, today the effort should be placed in rising above the need for this positive discrimination. As a society, we should be civilized enough to respect the human rights and equality of everyone. Another act named the Equal Pay Act was established in 1963to abolish the payment gap

Similar Essays

Gender Equality And Equal Opportunity Essay

2324 words - 10 pages employment of female in banking industry has been the unfavourite but things have changed since Second World War as more females are involved in banking industry (Crompton 1989 : 144). ANZ Bank and other financial institutions around Australia has been working towards combatting the gender inequality in terms of pay equity, promotions and opportunities to all employees across the organisation. The following content in this essay will discuss 3 main

Gender Equity In Math And Science

2793 words - 11 pages be done to help correct it. Everything I've read so far states that a gender gap exists in science, while opinions about math vary. I found a paper on the Internet from the National Center for Education Statistics called “Trends In Educational Equity of Girls & Women.” Using information from NAEP this source states that between 1973 and 1994 academic achievement of females in math was about equal to males (NCES, 2000). The NCES

Gender Equity In Health And Health Care

2727 words - 11 pages Introduction It is often challenging to have health care services that meet the needs of Canada’s diverse population and the needs of both men and women. Gender influences access to care and women in particular are at risk for face difficulties to care (Ontario Women`s Health Equity Report, 2010 p.1). Women are more likely to be poor and have greater caregiver responsibilities in contrast to men. These both factors are barriers to accessing

Output And Gender Discrimination In Pay: Evidence From Manufacturing Industry Of The Kyrgyz Republic

4372 words - 17 pages controlled and included into the analysis, gender discrimination can be examined. Due to lack of data on individual characteristics, this research states the main assumption that the entire gap in pay equals to discrimination. To correct this imperfection, the choice of manufacturing industry is determined by almost equal number of male and female students who are later believed to constitute major labor supply in the industry. Thus, male and female