Hannah Michaelson
Mrs. Straub
Economics
23 March 2015
Gender Segregation Among Athletes
It’s a harsh reality to realize that women and men still aren’t considered equal. Although both men and women are allowed to attend school together and both are allowed to vote, they aren’t financially equal. Even in women dominated jobs, like nursing, women are still making less than their male counterparts. To prevent the gap from growing, there needs to be more awareness about the female economic gap.
Ever since we were younger, we were always taught to go after our dreams. I used to think I wanted to be a professional female athlete, making millions of dollars doing something I love. But I was blindsided by the giant financial gap between men and women. According to Steve Seepersaud, a journalists, that highest paid WNBA player, Sue Bird, only made $87,000 as a maximum salary, while Shaquille O’Neal made $20 million from the 2005-2006 season (Seepersaud). The reason for this gap is because women sports aren’t advertised as widely as the men sports are. A results of this leads to not filling the stadiums that the women are playing in. This is not just the case in basketball, but in soccer, golf, swimming, gymnastics, and softball. The only sport that is close to equality is tennis, where the prize money for both men and women are equal (“Pay Inequality in Athletics”).
A trade off avoiding the gender inequality in sports, is to pursue an occupation that doesn’t involve athletics. Unfortunately, that doesn’t solve the problem. Women are still making $0.75 to every $1.00 that a man is making. This video explains how the human capital affects the wages among the pay gap. Some of the factors include education choices, family life, and life choices.
(This graph is a visual depiction of the inequality that is occurring. If you notice that even in health care, women are still getting less than men.)
Another reason that men are still making more money than women is because there is a higher demand for men in the women dominated occupations. I believe that they think more men will enter the job if they are getting paid more, but really employers of men dominated jobs should be attempting to rise the pay of women. There are more men dominated jobs out there and if they raise the pay of women in those jobs, more women will be able to enter the workforce. If there are more workers, there will be a larger market. Just like the class simulation, if there are more sellers than buyers, there will be more opportunity to make a financial gain.
(Notice that there are only 6 states that are under the average of $0.75 and 16 are at or above $0.80, which is a very good improvement)
This map shows the gender pay gap throughout the United States in 2014. The trends that you notice in the regions are the same in the surrounding states because they are all producers in similar occupations. Like in the Midwest, they are mostly ranging closer to men’s pay because of the produce similar products that relate mostly to engineering and general education. The reason that further south has a larger gap is because the education systems down there don’t prosper as well as the Midwestern states.
After the researching this interesting topic, I began to realize that we need to help the economic world realize that the gap between men and women needs to be smaller. It is evident that it will take years, maybe decades to resolve this complication, but it will eventually evolve into equality.
Works Cited:
Casserly, Meghan. "The Geography Of The Gender Pay Gap: Women's Earnings By State." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 19 Sept. 2013. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.
"The Gender Pay Gap Is Real." Washington State House Democrats. Washington State House Democrats, 2 Sept. 2014. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.
King, Billie. "Women's Sports Foundation." Women's Sports Foundation. Women's Sports Foundation. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.
"Male Nurses Up 7% – And Earning 19% More Than Women." Physicians Weekly. Physician Weekly, 7 Mar. 2013. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.
Seepersaud, Steve. "Salaries for Women in Sports." AskMen. Ask Men. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.
Though it is true that on average women get paid less than men, it is in no small part due to the fact that there are some jobs, namely the dangerous ones like construction, that have higher pay than some cushier jobs, like being a cashier, and these dangerous jobs are often filled by men rather than women, which will contribute to the gap, but is not because employers are seeking out men to fill the jobs.
ReplyDeleteI think that gender equality is almost as good as it could be now. Men and women really have equal opportunities in most areas. Men do make more money than women, but it's largely due to the fact that men have harder jobs, the ones considered the "dirty jobs," that could pay more. Men and women are just not completely equal, and many women are not strong enough or physically fit enough for this type of male dominated job. I'm not saying there aren't some women who could do hard jobs like this, but physically men are stronger. The gender gap shouldn't be something people think over. People should be hired based on their skills for the job itself, paying completely no attention to their gender. If the right person for the job is a male, hire him over the other candidate and don't give her an advantage just because she's a female. Just take the right person for the job.
ReplyDeleteI really like this topic of this article because it relates to something I'm doing in AP Language! It's interesting to see the economic gap between sexes. Although it is not perfect, it has definitely improved from where it was in the past few decades. I like your graph you provided because it gave us a better understanding to where different states fall with the pay gap. Also, I think more jobs pay more that are high risk such as construction and making advanced machinery, which usually guys do. I think in that sense that it is okay for employers to pay them more than a women being a secretary because it has more risk. Employers should also look at the skills of the individuals and not the gender. If the skills are the exact same, they should not just choose the man just because he is a man. It should be based on who will make the company most succeed. Overall, great job on this article. It was very interesting to read and learn more about this specific issue.
ReplyDeleteThis was a really interesting article which relates to something my Spanish class is discussing(The Glass Ceiling). It's really interesting to see the gap between woman and men even nowadays when many will argue the gap is closing and there is more gender equality. One thing I really enjoyed was the graph provided because it really showed the fields that inequality is present in. It would have been interesting if you acknowledged the other typical jobs for women and then maybe compared those salaries to other typical men's jobs salaries(ex nurse, teacher, secretary, etc) vs business jobs. Overall, great piece and really interesting topic!
ReplyDelete