Introduction
Despite tangible progress in the recent decades, especially in developed countries, the gender pay gap continues to persist. This issue is stipulated by multiple prevalent reasons, the primary of which include educational characteristics, discrimination, types of jobs and industries, acquired experience, and numbers of working hours. In this regard, governments around the world adopted different respective policies, laws, and practices prohibiting inappropriate actions or encouraging employers to promote wage equality. Thus, this paper aims at examining and justifying the steps necessary to make proper moral action concerning the sex pay gap.
Appropriate Steps
Undoubtedly, in the case of the gender pay gap, moral actions should be primarily directed at aligning wages between males and females. This action can be implemented in several ways that have already demonstrated its effectiveness and feasibility. The first mechanism is establishing a specifically elaborated certification process requiring various governmental and business entities to show equal payment for men and women for the same job. This can encourage employers to assume moral ownership, and a sense of internal accountability for their own actions affecting personal lives and those around them (“Being your best self,” n.d.). Additionally, according to Wagner (2018), respondents engaged in different sectors agree that equal pay can improve the working environment, including employee relationships, and draw fresh talents, giving women additional stimulus to develop professionally. Indeed, workers value employers’ fair and impartial attitude towards them and are highly likely to repay by increasing their performance. Moreover, such practice aids in boosting corporate social responsibility and reputation accordingly, which favors companies’ growth overall.
The second step that should be compulsorily taken in tackling any form of discrimination and biases against women in the workplace. This step is tightly connected with moral efficacy, a concept stating that individuals can ethically and urge others to do so despite moral adversity. For instance, in the sue against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Ellen Pao claimed that the main reason for her termination was absent clear policies that could forbid or prevent discrimination at the company (“Pao & Gender Bias,” n.d.). This also conditioned that men predominantly had much better opportunities to be promoted than women. Furthermore, Pao argued that women could be frequently subjected to harassment and excluded from meetings and gatherings.
Ellen Pao also manifested moral courage implying the ability to translate moral intentions and decisions into specific moral actions (“Being your best self,” n.d.). Despite apparent risks, Pao stood up against the firm’s status quo by sending a formal memorandum to her superiors and the outside counsel. In this memo, she indicated incidents of harassment and articulated a resolute desire to enhance women’s work conditions. It is worth noting that decision to write the memorandum become one of the core cases of her dismissal. Overall, although Pao failed to prove the case of discrimination against her because of employees’ and the management’s conformity, she managed to raise this issue at the public level and stimulate other women to fight against workplace discrimination. This example shows that a single person’s determination can galvanize society or a particular group to defend their rights.
The next effective practice to promote gender pay equality is specific governmental programs allowing mothers to leave their children in kindergartens to go to work. The point is that caregiving responsibilities mainly assigned to women, especially raising children, put women at a disadvantage. This is because they can lose valuable working experience of several years or even the paid position. In this regard, kindergartens can significantly diminish the time spent by women at home and help them be more involved in performing their dork duties, which would favorably reflect on their careers. Moreover, governments should provide paid leave that also guarantees a secure return to their previous employer with the same or higher salaries (Frye, 2021). Besides, many countries have particular caregiver credits that level women’s retirement funds with those of men, which can be less because of fewer years in the workforce. Altogether, such initiatives will lead to an increased family budget, faster development of female workers’ skills, and better rates of staff turnover, employee retention, and corporate performance.
Other measures for mitigating the sex pay gap include increasing public awareness, the compensation of damages, and pay transparency. For example, the latter is directly related to moral ownership, efficacy, and courage. Pay transparency means incentivizing workers to gather and provide pay data reports to government bodies, thereby making them responsible for checking and improving their pay practices. In this regard, it is critical that employees and employers become committed to policies to encourage their colleagues to act in the same way.
Conclusion
In summary, the paper has examined and substantiated specific moral actions concerning the sex pay gap. In particular, the first measure is to develop a certification process requiring various governmental and business organizations to demonstrate equal payment for men and women for the same job. This can improve the working environment and corporate social responsibility, and attract new talents. The second step involves implementing appropriate policies and rules against discrimination in the workplace. Such a decision is associated with moral courage and efficacy, the ability to be prepared to risk, and encourage others to take respective actions. Finally, another incentive is specific governmental programs allowing mothers to leave their children in kindergartens and return to their previous employer with the same or higher salaries.
References
Being your best self, part 4: Moral action. (n.d.). Ethics Unwrapped. Web.
Frye, J. (2021). 10 Essential actions to promote equal pay.Center for American Progress. Web.
Pao & Gender Bias. (n.d.). Ethics Unwrapped. Web.
Wagner, I. (2018). Certified equality: The Icelandic equal pay standard. Rapport–Institutt for samfunnsforskning.