Since its foundation, America’s capitalist society has given many men and women of all backgrounds the ability to achieve economic security. However, after the 2008 recession, finding jobs and keeping wages have been concerns for many Americans. On the topic of pay wages, there have been many debates about whether men earn more money than women for the same jobs. This inequity today has sparked reform movements, even after the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which some claim to only promise “elusive” equality. While many remain adamant that the pay gap (estimated around 25% in 2009) is a result of gender discrimination, several other studies show that many factors play a role in the wage gap between men and women in America. With job wages being such an important part of modern society, these different arguments lead to the question: do women achieve the economic security of the American Dream? The author intends to shed light on the important factors that result in today’s wage gap, and assess whether or not women in America are as economically secure compared to men.
The online statistics of the gender wage gap today are available for anyone to see, yet they can be misinterpreted quite easily. Typically, online sources say that, in America, full-time, year-round working women only make 78% of what full-time, year-round working men do, meaning they make 78 cents per every dollar that men make. Truly, on average, women do make less money than men do, but what is to blame for this gap? Is this a direct violation of one of the ideals that America was based upon—equality, or are there other factors that dispute this seemingly discriminatory fact? As it turns out, factors such as “career choice, education and experience, hours and work schedules, and career interruptions” contribute largely to pay gaps between men and women, and once these factors are taken out, the gap drops down to only five cents. For example, among government workers, who are highly protected by non-discriminatory pay laws, women make only 89 cents on the dollar compared to men. This is because while women make up 75 percent of all federal social workers, they only make up 17 percent of all federal engineers, who make a significant more amount of money than social workers ($117,000 compared to $79,000). The career choices between men and women explain a large part of the gender wage gap—Males substantially outperform females in mechanical ability and on some spatial and mathematical tasks, while females outperform males on other spatial and computational tasks, as well as in a number of verbal abilities. Naturally, men and women generally excel at different tasks, leaving no wonder why men dominate fields such as engineering and medicine, and women dominate fields like education and social services. Whether or not these jobs pay at a fair rate is a separate matter, but for this instance the wages are fixed—female-dominated fields pay less on average than male-dominated fields. While this paragraph covers an important factor explaining the gender wage gap in America, still there are several other factors apparent.
Hours, experience, and other unmentioned factors such as part-time workers, marriage, and family all play roles in the gender wage gap. According to a 2013 Boston University Law Review study, “single women without children often earn about the same, or more, than single men, while married mothers earn substantially less than either married men or single women." Some sources claim that the lesser earnings of married women is a direct result of gender discrimination in the hiring process, but this claim being so difficult to directly prove, others continue to point towards other factors that may account for this statistic. Hours and experience also contribute to the wage gap, as the aforementioned Boston University Law Review study claims, in that generally men work more hours than women do, and even typically choose riskier careers than women (explained by the risk-taking characteristics males develop early on). In addition, part-time jobs are relative because, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women are nearly twice as likely as men to work part time (26.6 percent of women in 2010 were working part-time). If one fourth of working women were working a relatively small number of hours, it must be expected that the average pay for women would see a decrease.
This paper has gone over several factors that lead to today’s gender wage gap in America. Popular ideas that women are paid less than men for working the same job is simply misinterpreting the “78 cents per male dollar” statistic. Yet, studies still have shown that, after greatly reducing the aforementioned contributing factors, there is still a small amount of pay gap that is unexplained by any other component. Some claim that this is where the gender discrimination plays a role. Just as in the case where married women are less likely to be hired than single men and women, there may very well be a problem in the hiring process where employers discriminate against women and other applicants for particular reasons. How persistent is this problem, and is there something that can be done to fix it? While the U.S. constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind in the workplace, it is nearly impossible to know the employer’s true reasons for denying an application, there may not be much more that the law can do to prevent this.
Overall, when the details and facts are checked, men and women in America make nearly the same amount of money on average for working the same jobs. For all the jobs in America, on average women make less than men because of several factors including career choice, hours and experience. No law can demand a truly “moral” check on employers who deny applications, because employers can use excuses, and such a law may infringe upon other liberties. However, because this “gender discrimination” factor is found to attribute to only five percent of the gender wage gap, in the end it can be said that, person for person, women can achieve the same economic security of the American Dream as men can.