Activity #10

The gender wage gap is a subject in which many people have may different opinions as to if it is justified or not. I had never really thought about the difference in wages among men and women before recently and had never heard both sides of this argument until reading this article. June O’Neill does believe that the gender wage gap is justified but Hilary Lips does not believe it is. Reading both of their sides gave me more insight and also more of an understanding for what I believe on this matter.
My opinion of this matter is that the gender wage gap is not justified, therefore I agree with Hilary Lips side of the issue. She explained that the reason that the gender gap is not as noticeable as it used to be and therefore looks like it is getting better is because most business use weekly and hourly rates for pay rather than using annual pay rates. With this system, men usually work more hours than women making the gap still a large one. The reason that men can work more hours is because of a few things. One is that if the woman does in fact have a family, then they may not be able to work all the hours that a man could due to family obligation. Also, some of the “extra” things that are offered at works for more pay may not be an option with a family because they are usually weird hours. Another thing that makes it hard for women to get as many hours as men is because with long hour jobs, something having to do with travel for example, men are more likely to have those jobs or positions because a lot of time women think about what if they started a family or being away from home too long. Therefore, they do not take jobs that may require that lengthy period of time away from home.
Another thing that makes the gender gap so big is the fact that they use men’s standard of working as the normal. This model does not include family and domestic issues that should be included due to women having to deal mostly with these issues.
Another thing that makes the gender gap so different is the “rumor” that it is just accidental that women and men choose different occupations in which men just happen to choose ones that pay more than women. This is defanantly false. The best example to back that up is how women and men are both teachers, but women teachers make 95% less money than men teachers. This shows that even though women typically are teachers more than men are, men still make the most money.
The writing about the gender gap being justified by June O’Neill makes a huge deal about how women choose to go into less important jobs due to the family. They choose occupations that work with the home, which is usually part time jobs, with less hours and lower pay. The things that O’Neill brought up in her paper all seemed to be things that, even though are true, are not necessarily women’s faults. Even though part time jobs maybe chosen by more women, the men that are in them as well still make more money than the women with the same job. This shows that the wages are still unfair and need to be examined more closely by our society to make a change.