Smith

Cassidy Smith
Professor: Jean Coco
English 1001
15 November 2016
audience- working women
Preface- There is a lot of information that I got from my resources. My biggest concern is if I
put it all together in a way that makes since. I could have worked on how my essay stays on topic
throughout the paper. My concern is that my inquiry question is not answered clearly in the
paper.
Gender Pay Gap

When going to your day-to-day job, whether it be a cashier or a lawyer, would you ever
wonder if your paychecks were equal compared to your male coworkers? My guess would be
probably not; you are doing just as much work as they are right? Well the true answer is if you
are a woman you are more than likely getting paid less than your male peers. Why does this
gender gap even exist and how far how women really come? Evidence shows the working
women gets payed about 25 percent less than men. Let me make that more clear ladies, we get
payed about 81 percent to every $1 a male makes (Billitteri). Although this gender pay gap is
unfair we have come significantly far from where we first started.
Women have gotten up to this point in so called waves. The first wave in the Mid 19th
century to 1920 was also known as the suffrage movement or gaining women the right to vote.

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Women started to find jobs that were diverse and not just in the domestic fields. The second
wave in the 1960s and 1970s is when women got equal access to employment and education
(Michelle). Although half of women in American families at that time were not considered to be
bread winners and stayed home to take care of the family (Billitteri).
Then a women named Betty Friedan who is considered to have started the whole
feminism movement wrote a book called The Feminine Mystique which sent women in an
uproar. According to Betty womans lives were comparable to comfortable concentration camp
where mothers and wives were subjected to patriarchy (Michelle). Patriarchy is a term meaning a
system where masculinity is dominant over feminism. Soon after this book was released
President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act. Kennedy declared that this act affirms our
determination that when women enter the labor force they will find equality in their pay
envelopes (Billitteri). This pay act remains vague for millions of women to this day (Elmore 2).
final wave has been since the 1970s where women can obtain diversity and the variety of
identities (Michelle). Now here we are today in 2016 having more equality as well as still
debating whether women are paid fairly in the workplace.
One of the huge problems we still face today is sexism which occurs when a persons sex
is the basis for prejudicial treatment. Bosses provide unequal pay because we are women and
cannot perform the jobs as well as the male workers. Lilly Ledbetter who worked as a Goodyear
manager is a great example of this. It took her years to realize her companys pay raise was
creating a big gap between her pay check and her male coworkers. She was earning $3,727 a
month while the highest-paid males also doing the exact same job she was doing were making
forty percent more than her.

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She took her case to the U.S. Supreme Court only to be denied because under our antdiscrimination law you must submit a formal complaint to the federal government within a 180day period of the first paycheck. Ledbetter is flabbergasted how this wasnt associated it as
discrimination when it sure feels like discrimination when you are on the receiving end of that
smaller paycheck and trying to support your family with less money than the men are getting for
doing the same job (Billitteri). President Obama later signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,
making the 2007 supreme court ruling invalid. This new improved act allows employees to claim
they are being discriminated 180 days later after that discriminatory paycheck (Michelle).
The biggest sex discrimination lawsuit in history was a law suit charging Walmart stores
of progressing employees based on their sex and being biased. The law suit was filed by Betty
Dukes as well as other female employees. Betty worked there for six years and had great
performance reviews but was denied opportunities in order to have a higher income salary. This
one act of standing up against sexism affected 1.6 current and former Walmart employees.
Although the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Dukes it still impacted many women showing
how discrimination is a common act (Billitteri).
Sexual harassment also causes problems in the work area as well as gender pay gaps.
Sexual harassment is any illegal form of discrimination involving everything from inappropriate
jokes on the job to sexual assault. Its purpose is to make women feel uncomfortable, walking
down the street and listening to whistles and hey baby is just an example (Conley 215). One of
the environments women experience sexual harassment is in the waitressing field. California
started telling is businesses to take sexual-harassment education very seriously. After reading
some scary statistics I do not blame them.

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Between 1,163 and 1,275 cases of sexual harassment are reported annually. Many
restaurant chains are accused every year of all sorts of sexual harassment. The average company
spend 6.7 million a year just on these cases. Some examples include, Pizza of Florida Inc. paying
225,000 dollars to two teenage sisters who claimed they were harassed sexually. Longhorn
Steakhouse payed three teenage girls 200,000 dollars for being touched inappropriately by a
manager (Allen 1). All of these instances keeps that mentality men have which is that they are
more dominant then women which therefore they can do a better job in the workplace.
Gender roles are groups of behavioral norms or informal rules that label you as a male or
female (Conley 214). These roles can be stereotypical, the women are the stay-at-home mom
and the dad is the breadwinner. Women are assumed to be the one who takes care of most the
house duties and kid obligations while the man works. Women dominant the soft sciences such
as sociology or anthropology. While men dominate the hard sciences such as physics and
astronomy. Women may go for those softer sciences to get more manageable jobs with better
pay leave to take care of her home duties. Sometimes women cannot take that certain
promotion or job because it has unpredictable hours and not enough room for days off because of
their assumed gender roles (Billitteri). This causes a percent in that pay gap.
There are three main theories that explain these gender roles and shows us how they can
affect women in the working field including their pay compared to males according to Dalton
Conley. The first one is called Sex Role Theory created by Talcott Parson, an American
sociologist of the 1950s, who showed us gender relations. This theory talks about the sex roles
men and women perform. Women as just wives or mothers and men as breadwinners. This type
of family is the ideal family according to society in order to replace workers. With a working
father and a domesticated mother, children are more likely to learn their functions in society and

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behave in our societal system. In other words, society has to be this way in order to operate
properly (Conley 213)
The second one is the psychoanalytic theories where theorists focus more
individualistically then as society as a whole. It was created by Sigmund Freud who was known
for his line Anatomy is destiny. Interactions with your parents develop your masculine and
feminine personalities. Women are predominately the care givers because parents have unequal
involvement in child nurturing. Learning your role in society happen through socialization with
your parents. This is why little girls identify with mothers and boys with fathers (214).
The last theory is called the conflict theory. Unequal gender interactions claimed to be by
feminist as the root of inequality such as in your job. An economist Heidi Hartman and legal
theorist Catharine MacKinnon both studied how the fusing of capitalism and patriarchy cause
women to become economically reliant on the males earnings. Basically the men benefit when
the woman are subordinate. Conflict theorists point out that men stand to lose a great deal if
gender discrimination disappears. So women and men are the two groups that are set as rivals
against each other. If women rise in the working world men suffer. Since women are subordinate
we are not required to get equal pay right (214)?
That brings us in to two terms that describe womens max position in the work force and
mens unlimited climb. These two terms are known as glass escalator and glass ceiling. Glass
escalator is mens ability to rise up at a quicker rate to leadership positions in feminized jobs.
Christine Williams found that men are privileged and still maintain being macho in jobs such as
male nurses, librarians, and elementary school teachers. Think about it for a second. At your
school did you have a male principle. Where the administrators mostly male then female.
Usually higher positons in school are run by mostly males. They start out as teachers and make a

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fast climb up the ladder or as we call it escalator (214). If men are rising to higher positons in
briefer periods of time in women dominant occupations, they are of course going to make more
money than their female coworkers widening that gap even more.
That second term I mentioned called glass ceiling, created by The Wall Street Journal in
1986, refers to gendered barrier women encounter in more-prestigious corporate occupations.
You can also look at it as an invisible limit on womens climb up the occupational ladder
(Elmore 1). Women experience this all the time in their professional jobs. Representative Patsy T.
Mink talks about how women are afraid to have a voice in her job. She states if you complain
you lose your job and are pushed off to the side. You are casted off to a corner and seen as
inferior. All of this because its extremely difficult in federal bureaucracy for us females. Some
women also believe congress is part of the problem like Martin who is a Representative for
Illinois. She stood up for women and her job in congress stating how the 80 percent of coworkers
making more than 40,000 were male (Adams). The Glass Ceiling Commission signed 10
contracts in order to conduct research to show people how big of a problem this is. These
situations may explain why only 17 percent of women make up our Congress (Elmore 2).
Women are believed to be not as committed to their jobs as men because they have to go
home to take care of the kids, will leave to have babies, not flexible, natural role more nurturing,
or not aggressive. Men are just expected to get those awards or higher positions. For example, at
a meeting for the National Academy of Sciences gave two women a tie clip for receiving there
most prestigious award. They made the setting feel as if there were only male members. Clearly
making a fool out of themselves, the next year their awards were appropriate for both me and
women (Adams).

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Although women hold half of Americas jobs our numbers in the workforce are still
remaining unchanged since the mid-1990s. why should we obtain an 8,000-dollar difference in
our yearly paycheck from our male equals? We have made a lot of progress over the past 50
years but the glass ceiling is present (Elmore 2). The gender pay gap is a very real thing and
happens all around the world, not just in America. To know what is going on women have to be
informed. This is a time to come together and stand up for what is right. Unequal pay and gender
equality is a major issue in todays society for women. Men still see us as subordinate and
inferior. This kind of mentality is not only affecting womens jobs but our annual income. There
should be no limit for us on the occupational ladder. It is time for women to break that glass
ceiling once and for all. Change the direction of the course on the map, come on society fight the
gender pay gap.

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Work Cited
ELMORE, LEIGH. "HOW Far HAVE Women COME? (Cover Story)." Women In Business 64.3
(2012): 13. MAS Ultra -

School Edition. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.

"A matter of education: Workplace-required classes a way to curb sexual harassment." Nation's
Restaurant News 24 Jan. 2005: 16. Business Source Complete. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.

Adams, Bob. "The Glass Ceiling." CQ Researcher 29 Oct. 1993: 937-60. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.

Johnson, Michelle. "Women and Work." CQ Researcher 26 July 2013: 645-68. Web. 8 Nov.
2016.

Billitteri, Thomas J. "Gender Pay Gap." CQ Researcher 14 Mar. 2008: 241-64. Web. 8 Nov.
2016.

Conley, Dalton. You May Ask Yourself. W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.