Herman 1

Peter Herman

Professor Connie Douglas

UWRT 1104

30 March 2017

The Gender Wage Gap

The gender wage gap between men and woman is an ongoing problem that many people

are aware of. Most people know that there is a twenty-two percent wage difference between men

and woman. However, that may be only what certain groups of people want you to think. On

social media or on political platforms this huge gap is always being thrown out there, but how is

the wage gap from a statistical standpoint. People who look deeply at this problem do not agree

and think that the wage gap is very small. Then there are people that do not care at all about the

wage gap. They may look at both sides of the topic and not exactly agree with either one. One

way or another there is gender bias and this topic needs to be addressed.

Everyone knows that men and woman are not paid the same. When looking at the

differences between men and womens pay, there is a huge difference. Feminists believe that men

and woman deserves all their rights to be equal. However, with the gender wage gap feminists

feel that Men and women are not being treated equally, which goes directly against the feminist

belief of equal opportunity (Gotlib 5). Feminists try to get other people involved with this

problem so they try to reach out to other people with facts. Telling people that there is a twenty-

two percent wage gap which sounds huge. The most common way that this information is spread

is through social media. Alanna Vagianos writes that Social media platforms like Facebook and

Twitter are a great way to make your voice heard (Vagianos 15). People who think that the
 Herman 2

gender wage gap is a huge problem are big promoters for it with social media being the first way

of doing so.

When the 22 percent wage gap is looked at closely it does not seem as big as it is put out

to be. For people who only look at the statistics the 22 percent wage gap is only the average

difference in hourly wages between men and woman. When other factors are included in this

such as choice of occupation or work experience the gender wage gap is much smaller. After

other factors are factored in it is said that A more accurate ratio, after adjusting for differences

in gender employment patterns, is closer to 92 percent (Samuelson 3). That is an eight percent

wage gap and much smaller than the 22 percent wage gap. Bourree Lam ex plains how In the

case of the pay gap, economists often adjust their data to compensate for the fact that; for

example, men are overrepresented in high-paying computer programming jobs, and women are

overrepresented in low-paying service jobs. These adjustments lead to numbers that stand as

good estimates of how big a pay gap would be if men and women were represented in equal

numbers in each profession (Lam 21). This quotation explains how if other factors are

accounted for the gender wage gap would seem much smaller. This is why people who look at

the statistics think the gender wage gap is not a big problem.

If you pay any attention to current events or the news you know that there is a gender

wage gap. However, there are a lot of people who do not care about the gender wage gap. There

are people who look at the side who says the gender wage gap is a huge problem and also the

people who think it is nothing and still decide not to get involved. Most of the time people do not

get involved either because it does not concern them or because they do not want to offend other

people. It is usually men that do not care about the gender wage gap because they are the ones

getting paid more so they do not care to advocate for equal pay. Men say that "This Is Just a
 Herman 3

Women's Issue" (Thorpe 12). Kevin Miller asks Did you know that in 2015, women working

full time in the United States typically were paid just 80 percent of what men were paid, a gap of

20 percent? (Miller 7). Some people may not even be aware of this because it goes right over

their head. When a situation does not affect someone directly they often do not care about it

much.

There are many different voices when it comes to the gender wag gap. Feminists think it

is a big problem, people in statistics say it is not as big of a problem as it is put out to be, and

some people just dont get involved because it doesnt affect them. The feminists think that

companies do not think woman are competent enough to do the job right and they should not get

paid as much as a man because of it. When looking at statistics, people can factually prove them

wrong by showing what the gender wage gap does not incorporate certain factors that need to be

included to be accurate. Then there are the people who do not want to listen to feminists or look

at charts of statistics most likely because it does not affect them. One way or the other everyone

has their own voice over the gender wage gap.

 Herman 4

Works Cited

Elieligotlib. "Feminism Today: The Gender Pay Gap Written by Elisheva Gotlib (with tweets)

Eligotlib." Storify. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.

Lam, Bourree. "What Gender Pay-Gap Statistics Aren't Capturing." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media

Company, 27 July 2016. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.

Samuelson, Robert J. "What's the real gender pay gap?" The Washington Post. WP Company, 24

Apr. 2016. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.

"The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap (Spring 2017)." AAUW: Empowering Women

Since 1881. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.

Thorpe, JR. "6 Ways People Deny The Gender Wage Gap - And How To Respond." Bustle.

Bustle, 12 Apr. 2016. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.

Vagianos, Alanna. "10 Things We Need To Do To Close The Wage Gap." The Huffington Post.

TheHuffingtonPost.com, 14 Apr. 2015. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.