The pay gap based on gender is perhaps the biggest form of inequality faced by women. The fact is simple, people, regardless of their gender, should be paid equally for equal work. Nevertheless, this fact seems to have become complicated as men outshine women in leadership, C-suites and management in most of the profitable industries like banking, corporate offices also in high reward jobs.
If you take a closer look, you will see that there is actually no such valid reason for paying women less than men for an equal performance. As per a report by the Institute of Women’s Research, it was found out that equal pay for women could boost the American economy by a whopping $515 billion. Here are few things you should know on this.
#1: The location and kind of work has a drastic effect on the possibility of equal pay
It was researched among 510 metro cities throughout the country and later on it was found that women earn an average of 70% of what women earn in similar jobs. Nevertheless, there are other metro cities where the gap is almost close to 80% or even better. Cities like Las Vegas, LA, Jefferson City, Arizona, Maine and Bangor have slimmer pay gaps than the average that is found elsewhere. After deducting the housing costs, women in those metros earn the highest income. However, if you consider the women of Utah, they are actually the worse performing metro area.
#2: You should work for a company which closes this age and gender gap
There are few companies which think forward and which realize the negative financial impact of paying less to woman and they’re making rectifications about correcting it. Starbucks has committed to radical transparency and they do not intend to discriminate towards employees who discuss about salary openly. P&G, Mastercard and Microsoft have reported in America that women make 99.8 cents for each dollar that is paid to women.
#3: Unemployment rate among women is lower than that of men
One of the most powerful revelations that need to be taken into account is that women face much lower unemployment rate than men, 5.4% vs 7% among men. Whenever the unemployment rate is low, the wages will automatically increase but the same isn’t happening for the women. Hence, here too, the wage gap will defy the economic theory which has been accepted. This is yet another worthy reason to stop all arguments which say that women should be paid less than men.
#4: The Paycheck Fairness Act will help
The bipartisan legislation is all set to take away all loopholes in the current law, break all sorts of harmful patterns of discrimination of pay and strengthen protections against the workers who are women. Hence, this can be taken help of.
Therefore, when you don’t seem to be satisfied with the discrimination of women against men and the resulting pay gap, make sure you hire an attorney who can help you retain your rights. You can see more information on equal pay act in order to educate yourself.
