Earning lower wages by women as compared to men is a reality that is evident across various professions. On average, female workers are paid 79 cents for a dollar that their male counterparts are paid despite the great number of females having joined various occupations in addition to their enormous achievements in academics (Schieder & Gould, 2016, p. 1). After adjusting for characteristics such as cumulative years of schooling, career background, and locale, different research studies contend that overt gender discrimination has an impact on male and female wage differences (Schieder & Gould, 2016). Sexism is an issue that many employed women have to grapple with in their workplaces. Additionally, high-paying professions require long hours of commitment that may be disadvantageous to many women as they tend to shoulder most of the family caretaking responsibilities (Schieder & Gould, 2016). Without a doubt, societal norm is a major factor that encourages gender biases that are attributable to the existing wage gap between women and men in their respective workplaces.
The arguments about women having lower wages compared to men are convincingly true as other researchers agree on the existence of such discrepancies. From some scientific studies, women were found to earn 84% of men’s compensation in terms of the average hourly remunerations of part-time and full-time employment (Graf et al., 2021, p. 1). Based on the evidence, the mean wages for females were slightly lower than for men. Notably, motherhood has been cited as a factor that interrupts women’s career development. It has been established that of all workers who have taken any form of leave from their occupations, mothers tend to have significantly more time from work compared to fathers (Graf et al., 2021). Implicatively, the responsibilities associated with motherhood are more compared to fatherhood concerning caretaking in a home setup. With the support of these elaborated findings, I find the arguments of Schieder and Gould on the wage gap between female and male workers to be incontestable.
References
Graf, N., Brown, A., Barroso, A., & Patten, E. (2021). Gender wage gap in U.S. held steady in 2020.Pew Research Center. Web.
Schieder, J., & Gould, E. (2016). “Women’s work” and the gender pay difference: How biases, societal morals, and other forces affect women’s occupational choices—and their pay.Economic Policy Institute, 20. Web.