Separate And Unequal Analysis

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Do you think it is fair for a person to get paid less than someone else simply because of their gender? It is unjust and unfortunately it happens right here in our country. In the United States, women are oppressed every day by receiving a lower wage than men. This is known as the wage gap. They have been mistreated this way for a long enough time already. This paper will explain that the gap should be closed because of the effects it has on women emotionally and financially and women with families. Also, it is time that women are treated equally to men in this country. To understand the subject more thoroughly it is important to analyze exactly why the wage gap has been an ongoing problem in our country. In the article “Separate and Unequal: …show more content…

Sometimes, women are not given the chance to make more money because employers think that men are stronger, smarter, or more experienced or skilled (Gender Differences 84). This obviously means that women do not get a fair chance to get higher paying jobs in some cases. However, women know how to fight and try to make things right. An example of this is in the article “Understanding the ‘‘Family Gap’’ in Pay for Women with Children”. Jane Waldfogel states that if women had “not increased their investments in education and experience, the gender pay gap would have widened in the 1980s simply due to the changes in the overall wage structure” (140). In the United States, women have been fighting for their equality since the beginning. First, it was the women’s suffrage movement that was catching everyone’s eye. Recently, the fight against the gender wage gap has come to many people’s attention and is finally making an …show more content…

In “Understanding the “Family Gap” in Pay For Women with Children”, Jane Waldfogel states that “the gap in pay between women and men has been narrowing, the gap between women with children and those without children has been widening” (137). This is happening because the policies for females’ pay during maternity leave and other family emergencies used to be not very clear (Waldfogel 137). It is demonstrated here that if the policies are more organized, there may be a much smaller gap between women with and without families, and between women and men. There was eventually a Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993 which cleared up all the confusion (Waldfogel 140). However, the United States still continues to have one of the shortest periods of time for maternity leave (Waldfogel 142). In the article, Waldfogel states that “the gender gap in pay is greater in the United States than in any other countries with more fully developed family policies” (142). This again, emphasizes how the pay gap can continue to decrease more quickly if there were a more firm family policy in our

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