The other day, I was scrolling through my feed on Instagram when I came across this photo:
I automatically sent it to my sister and my friend, Joe, because I know that they like to talk about this type of stuff (thankfully).
Even though we all knew that the wage gap existed, all three of us were incredibly outraged. Being a woman in this day, I already know that my salary may not be as large as my brother’s strictly due to the fact that I am a girl. Along with this, I am apart of the LGBT community and I know I will marry a woman in the future. I am incredibly happy that I am able to not only dream about this, but that it is a possibility. But with this in consideration, not only will I be losing money myself , my spouse will also be losing money. This is upsetting and encourages me to continue being apart of progressive movements. After viewing this image I naturally did a little more research to discover exactly where this gap originated and what attempts had been made to close this gap.
In the rest of this blog post, I will be reporting what I have found while focusing on the gap between white women and men.
The wage gap is used as a number that is used to indicate the status of a group income differences.
In 1963, the Equal Pay Act was signed in attempts to close the wage gap between men and women at a rate of half a penny a year.
Two landmark court cases served to strengthen and further define the Equal Pay Act:
Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. (1970), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
→ jobs need to be “substantially equal” but not “identical” to fall under the protection of the Equal Pay Act
Corning Glass Works v. Brennan (1974), U.S. Supreme Court
→ employers cannot justify paying women lower wages because that is what they traditionally received under the “going market rate.”
During World War II, a large number of women began taking on jobs. Because of this, the National War Labor Board began to urge employers to make adjustments to equalize wage rate paid to females with the wage rate paid to males starting in 1942. Not only did the employers fail to do this voluntarily, but at the end of the war, the majority of women lost their jobs.
It wasn’t until the Equal Pay Act of 1963 that it became illegal to continue the practice of paying women at lower rates strictly due to their sex.
It wasn’t until the Equal Pay Act of 1963 that it became illegal to continue the practice of paying women at lower rates strictly due to their sex.
Over the years, the act gradually expanded and between June 1964 and January 1971, 71,00 women were paid $26 million in back wages. the Equal Pay Act radically changed the work place. However, although there has been radical change, there has not been significant changes in closing the gap. Although it is narrowed, men eared 20% more when women in wages in 2012.
This gap had narrowed by 20% since 1963.
This raises the question of why this gap is narrowing to slowly over the past four decades.
This gap is due to the amount of money each age group of women are willing to work towards. While women under 25 are making 93.8% of what a man makes, a woman at the age of 55 is willing to work for 75.2% of what a man makes.
Assumingly, this means that as older women begin to retire, the gap should shrink considerably.
I am glad that I found out that the percentage in the wage gap was large due to lurking factors. However, new and innovative attempts must be made to bring wage gaps down among ethnicities.
letsgettothecore 