Lila Kothari
3/11/2019
On Friday, March 8th, we celebrated International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day is celebrated annually on March 8th and it became an annual celebration after the Socialist Party of America organized a Women's Day on February 28, 1909. Then, in 1910, the International Socialist Women's Conference suggested a Women's Day be held annually and adapt a theme each year. This year’s theme is “#BalanceForBetter”. This holiday is meant to acknowledge women, but what are we really acknowledging? A wage gap?
Although the scarcity of women in the workplace has significantly decreased, there is still an unbalance. Acknowledged by Harvard University, there is still a significant gap in the workforce between the contributions being made in countries such as the United States and Japan. According to the Harvard Business Review (or HBR), “the increase of women in the paid workforce was arguably the most significant change in the economy in the past century. In the U.S., women’s participation in the labor market has nearly doubled, from 34% of working age women (age 16 and older) in the labor force in 1950 to almost 57% in 2016.”
The education gap has already closed and now there is equality in that realm, the next step is to push for a closed gap in the workplace. As we have seen throughout the past decade or so, there is an increased demand for women to be in the workplace. According to unwomen.org, “when more women work, economies grow. Women’s economic empowerment boosts productivity, increases economic diversification and income equality.” These positive externalities are reasons as to why there is such a large push to balance the workplace and the wage gap in addition to overall equality.
According to the World Economic Forum, “Empowering women to participate equally in the global economy could add $28 trillion in GDP growth by 2025.” That is HUGE economic growth and would impact both countries close the gender gap in the workplace and positively benefit the economy both nationally and globally. Some statistics found by CBS News include, “The U.S. lags other developed nations in both pay and gender policies, with the average S&P 500 board including just one woman for every four men,” and, “women who work outside the home are paid an average of $11,000 less per year than men.” That’s insane! Wouldn’t you think that in more developed countries that the gender gap would be closed or almost completely closed?
Although many agree that women are supposed to have more of a part in the workforce, many fail to acknowledge the other duties that a woman is supposed to hold as well. For example, a motherhood set back is in place. According to CBS News, this means that, “the gender pay gap sharply widens for women with children, rising to 30 percent less than what men earn compared with 10 percent less before they had kids, a study from the U.K.'s Institute for Fiscal Studies found.” This is a major negative externality taking place when women are expected to participate in benefiting the economy and juggling motherhood and family as well.
It’s crazy to think that a gender gap is still creating a pay gap. We can see that women would make a huge impact in the future stability of the economy if more work yet they are still being underpaid and underrepresented due to all of the issues that they still face to this day. It’s 2019, drop the gender gap and increase the pay for women so our economy can flourish.
Works Cited
Abney, David, et al. “This Is Why Women Must Play a Greater Role in the Global Economy.” World Economic Forum, www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/this-is-why-women-must-play-a-greater-role-in-the-global-economy/.
“About International Women's Day.” International Women's Day, www.internationalwomensday.com/About.
“Facts and Figures: Economic Empowerment.” UN Women, www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/economic-empowerment/facts-and-figures.
Inspires, Everything. “International Women's Day 2019 Campaign Theme | History & Facts.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Feb. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp7Uk09leU0.
“International Women's Day 2019: The Sorry State of Women in America's Workplaces.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, www.cbsnews.com/news/international-womens-day-2019-gender-pay-gap-and-inequality-comes-at-a-high-cost/.
Josh. “Gender Inequality and Women in the Workplace.” Harvard Summer School, 15 Nov. 2018, www.summer.harvard.edu/inside-summer/gender-inequality-women-workplace.
Weinstein, Amanda. “When More Women Join the Workforce, Wages Rise - Including for Men.” Harvard Business Review, 23 Apr. 2018, hbr.org/2018/01/when-more-women-join-the-workforce-wages-rise-including-for-men.
What is even more insane than women having a wage gap in 2019, are the people that deny that women have a wage gap. A numerous amount of US Senators and Representatives even deny the existence of a wage gap. This greatly hinders the amount of progress our society can achieve, as these are the people in power and decide our laws. Many countries in Europe such as Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands have already closed their wage gap even before 2019, and are now seeing an increase in women in the workplace. And just as you said, when more people are in the labor force, productivity increases as well. We can even see this in our production possibility curves, when the population of the workforce is larger, the curve shifts so that the population can make more goods. It makes no sense why the people that are in power within the United States should knowingly have a wage gap in their country and still do nothing about it. There have been bills in the past proposing to close the wage gap in 2017, but it still failed in the Senate. And the fact that women who get doctorate degrees are making so much less than men who have the same education is also highly detrimental to the amount of women who will even want to pursue a higher education, as they make less than men who just have a bachelor's degree.
ReplyDeleteI believe that men do make more than women. I also believe that focusing on this one statement alone is the real issue. There are many things to take into account when comparing the pay of men and women. According to the 2015 American Time Use Survey by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, men work an average of 8.2 hours a day, and women work an average of 7.8 hours a day. Over the span of a year this adds up to a large difference, and can help to explain the pay gap between men and women. Statistically, men simply just work more hours than women. We all want equal pay between men and women but you have to take into account factors like this when determining if men actually get paid a lot more than women.
ReplyDeleteTo start, I like how you included both positive and negative externalities in your piece, and what their impact is regarding the gender and pay gap. This piece was quite intriguing to read, and I definitely agree with just about everything you said. It's incredibly unfair that still, in the year of 2019, there is a tangible wage gap between men and women when they may be doing the exact same work. It's insane to think that women with children may be making 70 cents to a mans dollar only because they have kids. All the evidence you provided is pretty staggering, but unfortunately true and may help people realize the true gravity of this situation. I enjoyed reading this and I'm glad you shed a bit of light on this disparity.
ReplyDeleteThis article was very surprising to me due to the still large and very present gap between men and women. My thought was that since the change in women’s pay was the most changed in the past century, the gap would be more equal. Yet, adding to the detail that women have to stay at home, I wonder if that is a reason behind the pay gap. What if employers see women and believe that their main and only focus will be on caring for their children, so they cannot focus at work? Whereas with men, most scenarios include men focusing more on work than home. As a result, when employers have the choice between a woman and a man for a certain job, will they pick the man or the woman and is it based on the stereotypes?
ReplyDeleteIn today's world Women day help our economy. By closing that gender pay gap with positively affect our economy. Women have came a long way when talking about workforce. Women had to be strength and stand up for themselves because they are capable to do work the men do. We should given women a lot of credit because not only are the women working but coming home and having to make dinner for their family plus helping clean and take care of kids. Making International Women’s Day a holiday was smart because there are a lot of women out there that don’t get recognized for the things they do that help our economy. Looking at the first graph its crazy to think how much men were making then women. But then in 2012 they are almost the same.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that more women have been joining the workforce than in the previous decades and that in itself shows change, but as you mentioned, it is simply not enough. There are so many industries targeted at exploiting the insecurities, wants and needs of women, yet, statistically, women have less money to spend? It is very clear that if the gap in pay were to be closed, the economy would greatly benefit. Especially since working mothers are significantly burdened since they are told to make a choice between their career and their children since doing both stretches them so thin. As much as I don't want to, we do have to see that increasing wages for women, who make up half of the female population above 16 in the workforce, will decrease short run aggregate supply which will increase the price level, but if the wages were also decreased for men slightly and increased just slightly for women to close the gap, this would both increase and decrease demand since men will have slightly less money to spend but women would have slightly more so in that way, hopefully the price level will not be too greatly affected.
ReplyDeleteOver the past Century, the percent of women in the workforce has increased at a very rapid rate. Right now we are seeing the most amount of women in the workforce, however the ratio between men and women working is still off by a lot. Economically, I think it is best to strive to increase the numbers of women working because it is shown that women working could add up to $25 trillion to our countries GDP just by 2025. There has never been a rule or anything that women are breaking by working, it is only the stereotype that we are changing when choosing to be successful in a powerful position, often lead by men.
ReplyDeleteGoing off that, I agree that there should be more women in the workplace, because like you said. There would be more positive externalities than negative in the process. For example, with having more women in the workplace not only will increase the amount of goods, being produced for our economy, but also boost the economic efficiency in the process. An example would be how countries like Finland for example, which has the highest percentage of women achieving higher education according to Business insider. With the increase in women in the workforce, and achieving economic and equal wages. It will not only be helpful, it is essential for a country to improve and further develop as a society. There’s a way more positive trade off in letting women get increased benefits in wages, than not doing so. By having countries not trying to support the inclusion of women within the economy development would be a downside in their overall economic progression.
ReplyDeleteThe questions of women’s rights to equal pay has always seemed to turn some noses, as if people are aware of the huge issue, but nothing is going to be done about it as long as humans are still the ones that are determining how much people get paid. Perhaps the reasons that there is such a huge wage gap in the workforce is due to women’s employers not trusting their long-term stability, considering so many have to go on maternity leave or need to only work part-time to be able to raise a family. While looking at the discrepancies between the wages of men and women within the same field and job, the data may not explain that it takes into consideration how much time off a woman needs during the average year, at least compared to a man. However, that’s not to say the wage gap is warranted in any way, shape, or form. Equality is vastly more important, so even if the time off wasn’t a possibly large factor, the wages should still be much closer to each other than a difference of $15000 a year. The demand for more women in the workforce may be low, but the wage gap is still unacceptable, which could also be the reason that more women don't want to join the workforce in general.
ReplyDeleteOne of the concepts that we have learned about in class this semester is the idea that our economy grows when more people work. We all need money to buy the things that we need to live. The only way for us to have money, is to earn it. This is where we turn to the workforce. However, as the push for equal rights for women has increased, new light has been shed on the wage gap between genders. As this article says, statistically women are earning less money that their male “equivalents”. I believe that you should only be paid based on the work that you do, regardless of your gender. I found the statistic about the $28 trillion GDP increase within the next six years to be quite a striking number. According to that article, all we must do to achieve this is advocate, and enforce equal pay. Based on this information provided, we must close the wage gap as soon as possible. In order to do so, everyone must advocate for equal pay for equal work.
ReplyDeleteI believe the best policy that we can enact to combat the gender pay gap is universal child care like they have in Sweden. This is because women are often the ones that have to take care of children and if women are forced to stay home from work to care for their children they earn less and are dependent on a breadwinner. Universal child care would allow single mothers (and fathers) to be able to work while having a child. Children are expensive and if we are to encourage equality between the sexes we also need to ensure that every child is taken care of.
ReplyDelete