The gender wage gap has been intensively investigated for some years but remains an area of active and innovative research. Wage inequalities have also received much attention from sociologists, economists, and policymakers in the U. S. A. and other countries. Wages are the integral factor determining everyone’s total income and have an important influence on people’s well-being. As much as they are not the only determinant of living standards depending on people’s needs, wages are the easiest to measure. Regarding trends, wages were stable during the 1950s and 60s in the U.S, but the trends changed in the 1970s and continued to grow increasingly disparate since then.
An increasing number of people have been earning lower wages than the average wage while those with high wages have been growing ever greater. However, the average wages between men and women have been considerably growing closer together although women still earn less than men. While all credible data point to the ongoing wage gap between men and women, there is a difference in opinion about whether this gap is problematic. Some people argue that the wage gap does not reflect discrimination by employers but the decision made by women in career choices and the issue of work-family balance.
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Others suggest that the wage gap highlights ongoing inequalities between men and women. They further argue that occupations perceived as women’s jobs have been underpaid compared to men’s job as a result of historical undervaluing of women’s work and skills. Contrary, most economists do not agree with them but indicates that the wage structure reflects a variety of human capital factors such as experience, education, and tenure. Demographic characteristics such as marital status and presence of children as well as job characteristics such as industry, firm size, part-time status, and union status are among the factors contributing to the unequal distribution of salary between men and women.
The human capital factors that affect income include job experience, tenure and work experience. Women are progressively catching up with men in labor force attachment and have caught up with men in educational attainment although the wage gap remains largely unchanged. Previous research indicates that as much as human factors explain a large portion of the wage gap, they are no longer considered to account for a substantial portion of the gender wage gap. Higher pay is directly associated with higher level of education which shows that education is vital in the distribution of the wages. Some studies indicate that men and women continued to select traditional fields of study in the 1990s and this prevented the gap from declining at that time, but presently this selection of traditional fields has contributed to increasing wage gap. The women in 1990s were likely to study health and education sector that saw substantial rollbacks and wage freezes.
Contrary, the men studied engineering and other technological fields which proved to be a lucrative choice during the high technology boom of the late 1990s. The facts above show that the wage gap between men and women is all about personal choice and no discrimination. Women also tend to work in the profession that employs women including teaching, nursing and administrative and office support positions. The differences in the fields of study and employment lead to substantial differences in pay. It is as a result of personal choice but contributed immensely by the slow to change societal norms and steering of women into lower paying, female-dominated occupations.
Another factor contributing to the wage gap between men and women is the demographic characteristics such as marital status and the presence of children. Expectations based on gender arising from these demographic characteristics are continuing. For instance, women continue to take on a larger portion of unpaid household work than men. Statistics Canada conducted a time use survey to measure how people spend their time. The survey indicated that while men and women work the same number of hours per day women spend two hours to do the unpaid work. The gap is slowly closing because men have started taking over a large share of the unpaid job.
Women tend to make labor force choices that allow them to balance their caregiving responsibilities as compared to men. The gap between men and women underlines the fact that they do not use time in the same way and the task of looking family is largely borne by women. Women balance their home and work lives by working part-time by providing care for children or taking care of family and personal responsibilities compared to men. The factors emanating from women’s role in the household are important determinants of the pay gap. The household roles have contributed to reducing hours in the labor market, education that is labor market-oriented, reduced mobility because of household ties and the willingness to pay for workplace amenities that are family friendly. The reduced hour as a result of women balancing the family and work life makes men work more as compared to women. Additionally, the wage gap between men and women can be explained by the differences in the job characteristics. Much of the wage gap can be explained by the differences in the workplaces of women and men in industries, size of establishment and types of work they do. Research indicates that women are concentrated in low paying occupations in industries, occupation, and establishments and gender segregation account for a large portion of the overall wage gap. The workforce continues to be largely divided into male jobs and female jobs. For example, men have a higher representation in the manufacturing, construction, transportation, trade and wholesale sector which are considered involving and dangerous by women. While women are concentrated in education, health and retail services which are more likely to work in small firms. More women also work in sales and service, finance and administrative and business as support. There is little discrimination, but there is a small number of contributing factor that adds up to the constraining influence. Nevertheless, the central factors that contribute to men women wage gap are the concentration of women in a small number of low paying jobs and the likelihood of women to make accommodations to balance paid and unpaid work.
Although gender discrimination in the workplace still exists in explicit and subtle forms, there is ongoing gender wage gap in the U.S. The wage gap between men and women is not wholly attributed to the discrimination of women, but some are contributed by the personal choice of women in the selection of work. Based on education, women choose nursing, teaching and office and administration support which are less involving and give caregiving responsibilities with minimal compensation. The women also concentrate on low paying jobs by choice. The difference in education and employment also contribute to wage gap between men and women. Women should be trained to negotiate for higher salaries, supported to gain degrees in higher education or obtain specific vocational training to compete with men in their fields. The value of work done by women in the nursing, teaching and retail trade and services should be promoted. It is women who choose the fields that are not lucrative, but they are not discriminated from work.
