Unit 4
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The gender wage gap has been defined in several ways in the book. Even though women and men are virtually equivalent in participation in the workforce, postsecondary learning, and paid jobs, there is still a wage disparity between them. Women employees earn seventy-seven percent of what men do in total. Also, after accounting for educational gaps, full-time vs. part-time jobs, and yearly vs. periodic employment profiles, the disparity remains. As a result, ladies of equivalent educational levels who work having a similar length of time per annum as their male colleagues earn twenty-three percent less than the males in similar positions (Kang, 2017). Hence, we can describe the pay inequality between men and women as the gender wage gap. According to researchers, discrimination, workplace segregation, devalued jobs, and underlying work-family tensions are four potential reasons for the gender wage gap.
Occupational discrimination refers to a labor force in which one party is much more eligible than another to do some jobs. Circumstances in which ladies are most prone to do some occupations and males are inclined to do others are gendered workplace gender discrimination. “Pink-collar” professions are those that women are most likely to work in. While “white collar” refers to well-paid management posts. The “blue-collar” refers to physical labor mostly performed by men with a wide variety of levels of income based on ability. “pink collar” refers to mainly low-income female-dominated positions involving services and, sometimes, emotional labor(Kang, 2017). Workers who must harness and maintain their feelings as a part of their profession are referred to as doing emotional labor. A waitress, for example, risks losing her role if she confronts disrespectful and insulting clients with rage; to maintain her work, she needs to contain her inner feelings and assist in the quelling of hostile customers’ attitudes. Emotional work is a part of every service-based job that includes dealing with clients. Nurses, secretaries, and teachers are the three leading “pink-collar” professions that are female-dominated since they all require a great deal of emotional labor.
Feminized employment, or work considered to be “female’s job,” is not only low pay, but it is often generally devalued or seen as having less merit than jobs considered to be male’s jobs. Caregiving work is a feminized field of the services sector economy since it demands a lot of emotional work and is chronically underappreciated. Women are the principal caregivers for vulnerable populations (Kang, 2017). According to economist Nancy Folbre, care jobs are not valued since ladies are more prone to undertake it and since it is deemed normal for women to understand how to be concerned. Customarily, women have done unpaid care work at their home, such as bring up children. Maybe this is due to the assumption that women are often sensitive and emotional compared to men since they conceive a child. Some believe that paying for these programs is unethical and needs to be performed selflessly, even by people who are not family (Kang, 2017). Females are depicted as having innate loving instincts and that there is no need to compensate them well for their efforts. Care work, as every other form of work, necessitates the learning of acquired qualifications. The surprising thing is that men who operate in this sector and other similar pink-collar occupations appear to be paid a decent wage and progressed to senior roles quicker than equivalent women. Adia Harvey Wingfield conducted an interdisciplinary study of the glass escalator definition and discovered that people of color, men, in particular, do not profit from it to the same degree as white people (Kang, 2017).
Lastly, the fourth reason for the salary difference between males and females workers is the tension between family and work that women are often prone to face than men. Women, for example, are far much inclined than men to take a day off work to give care to their kids. This is not an inevitable product of raising children. Most nations provide compensated leave to women employees, with the option to come back to their employment with the equivalent pay and rewards as when they quit. Many companies are expected to permit their employees to take up to 12 weeks of leave without pay under the FMLA rule. Sadly, few citizens can manage to be out of work for quite a long time without getting a salary, so this strategy is seldom used (Kang, 2017).
Furthermore, many companies are either uninformed of the law or notify their staff that they are entitled to a particular time off. As a result, when their kids are involved, women tend to leave full-time work and embark on part-time employment. Women’s total wages are adversely affected even though they switch to full employment after leaving and joining the labor market because they usually start from scratch in respect to income and position at new places of work (Kang, 2017).
Reference
Kang, M., Lessard, D., Heston, L., & Nordmarken, S. (2017). Introduction to women, gender, sexuality studies. Independent.