The Pay Gap: A Social, Not Legal Problem

By Timothy Hayes on April 7, 2015

Recently it was pointed out to me by a classmate that America, although called number 1 by a large portion of the nation, only leads the world in three fields: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, defense spending, and number of adults who believe in angels.

As it happens, I was at the time researching a topic I expected to see America lead: the gender pay gap.

For those of you who might be unfamiliar with this concept, the gender pay gap is an estimated difference in earnings between men and women in a country. This is calculated in a number of ways ranging from actual difference to the percent income women make compared to men. This disparity in wages has been tracked globally for about nine years and has been noted in the U.S. since women entered the work force.

As of 2013, in the U.S. women are estimated to make 78 cents to every dollar that men make. This number is a better reflection of what is called the earnings ratio or the ratio of women’s to men’s median earnings. No state or district in the U.S. has perfect 100 percent ratio.

Perhaps that statistic is unrealistic, but some are striving for it now. A conjecture could be made that this is because of women’s ability to bear children, and the unfortunate problem of no paid maternity leave in the U.S., but that’s another problem for another day.

Image thanks to www.nerdwallet.com

Women have unfortunately never been given fair wages across the board. This depravity was brought to the forefront of the public awareness just before the Civil Rights Act with the Equal Pay Act of 1963. This stood as the law and was unfortunately ineffective. Recently in 2009, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law, amending loopholes in the Civil Rights Act and Equal Pay Act.

So with these laws enacted, how can there still be a pay gap?

Well the answer to that is more complicated than you might think. While these laws prevent discrimination in employment based on race, gender, sexuality, religion, and pretty much anything other than ability to work, enforcing them is dodging at best.

The problems seen with pay gaps is sometimes just a matter of gender or race stereotyping. These kinds of biases are hard to prove and hard to spot. The unfortunate truth is that even nice people can fall into this pitfall for what could be justifiable reasons.

Imagine yourself now as a hiring manager at a business. Your job is to find the kind of people who will work hard and commit themselves to a job. Whatever job, the employee-to-be must be able to commit time to the job, be physically capable of whatever are the physical demands of the labor, and mentally sound to complete the work.

Now you and I know that there is usually no problem with employing someone based on these qualities. The problem arises when you make assumptions about these qualities based on other attributes of the potential employee like gender.

Most people make instantaneous decisions and judgements about people all the time. At one point in human history, this might have been a useful trait. This gut instinct could be the difference between living and dying in Paleolithic times.

Of course nowadays we don’t have to go shoot out dinner unless we want to. So these instantaneous decisions are misplaced, often perpetuating stereotypes and poorly drawn conclusions. This is where the inherent problem lies.

When asked what should be done about social issues and problems, most people in the U.S. would respond that a law was necessary to fix the problem. However dear reader, I would like to point out that marijuana production, ownership, and use is illegal in almost every state and under federal law and yet 25 million Americans have smoked marijuana.

The solution is not legislation, but legislation is a step in the right direction. Ideally, Congress and the rest of the elected government are supposed to reflect the vox populi or public opinion. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Ultimately the problem lies with the people. Change cannot come from the top down. If this nation wants to change something, they have to change it, not the government. Start by looking within to determine what internal biases you harbor and what stereotypes you have hiding in your eyes. Knowing you have these lets you fight them. Like G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle.

Things in the U.S. aren’t as bad as they might appear. The U.S. is certainly not the greatest country in the world, but we are ranked 20th in the world for gender pay gap, beating out the United Kingdom, Russia and China.

So while the disparity in pay is atrocious, things are definitely looking up and getting better.

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