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The Right Way to Go Is Equal

 The problem of inequality has been around since the beginning of time, whether it is regarding race, gender, or something else. For women everything has always come later. Men had always had the first opportunity at so many things like in voting, the military, and for many higher position jobs. With all of this, today we see the issue of the wage gap, men and women are not getting paid equally with the same job or amount of education. There is still the stereotype that because men are the main “breadwinners” that therefore they should get paid more. If both men and women have the same amount of education and skill, job, and families to feed then they should be paid the same amount, but not many people feel that way.

 Though both men and women should get equal pay there are some people who disagree with that.  Phillips (2017) tells us about one republican who thinks that the way men and women get paid now is the traditional way, men have always gotten more, and that due to this, things shouldn’t change (p.1). This still seems to be the view many people have today, that we should simply stick to what we know or have been doing since we could remember; it is just “simple economics”. Since it has always been said that men are the “‘primary breadwinners’ of their families…paying women equally would somehow ruin the makeup of a traditional family where ‘the Mother’ remains at home raising children” (Phillips, 2017, p.1). Though they may have the education or skill, when mothers stay home to take care of their children depending on how long they’ve been away, according to Sherwood (2011):

“When they return to the workplace, they inevitably have less experience than colleagues who remained. To close the gap we’d have to stop companies from looking at experience when they determine wages, or we’d have to get more dads to stay home and more moms to keep working when kids are young”. (p.2)

It doesn’t end there; there are still some reasons why people feel that men and women still shouldn’t be paid the same.

Those mostly affected and against this wage gap are men. In order for women to get equal pay, they will be getting more money. For this to happen the money has to come from somewhere, well that somewhere comes from the men. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, “If businesses are forced to pay women the same as male earnings, that means they will have to reduce the pay for the men they employ, simple economics” (Phillips, 2017, p.1). When men make less as the “primary breadwinners” they then “have an even more difficult time earning enough to support their families, which will mean more Mothers will be forced to leave the home (where they may prefer to be) to join the workforce to make the difference” (Phillips, 2017, p.1). When more men and women find new jobs it, according to Phillips (2017),” tends to induce intense competition within jobs, and therefore making the pay for everyone even more low (p.1). How do we know if these reasons are actual factual or just opinions?

Though these may seem like some logical reasons as to why men and women should not get equal pay, the reasons why men and women should get paid equally outweigh those. When it comes to women being paid less than men, there is a huge difference. According to Reuters (2018), with the time that women take off to take care of their family or children, they earn a little just around half of men, and this is just within a 15-year span (p.2). Just between. “2001 to 2015, the Washington-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that women’s income was 51 percent less than men’s earnings, which includes time with no income,” (Reuters, 2016, p.3). For women who are single mothers this is a real issue. Throughout the years there have been many legal cases that tend to prove that by just simply being a mother it lowers a women’s chance to advance in a workplace, while on the other hand being a father proves to be a benefit for men. (Chirillo, Clark, Gault, Hartmann, and Hegewisch, 2016. p.3). Having the same amount of education and experience doesn’t seem to be taken into account either because, “women’s human capital (generally measured as years of education plus years on the job and in the job market) are increasingly equal for women and men,” (Chirillo et al’s, 2016, p.3). This just goes to show that education and experience has nothing to do with it, but it all comes down to gender. The stereotype that many people today still have should not stop women from getting the pay that they deserve. If men were to switch places with women they would surely want to get paid equally too.

The issue of the wage gap between men and women is still here today and seems like no matter how wrong it may be, it doesn’t seem like it will be coming to an end any time soon. Despite the few acts/laws they’ve passed regarding this issue it doesn’t seem like anything is being done about it. We see the issues of why people are against the change because it’s what we’ve been used to so why change. Mothers should stay home with the kids while fathers go work, therefore getting more pay. We also see the side that supports this change, gender should not come in the way of how you should get paid but whether or not you get the job done the right way. At the end of the day we should continue to push for equal pay because it is something that needs to be done.

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