This is just an interesting info graphic that I found online. Now, it is for Australia and not the U.S., but equality is a worldwide issue. I know we hear a lot about women getting .77¢ for every man's $1.00, but I think this image really brings the issue home.
"You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work.” -- President Barack Obama, State of the Union, January 2014
The difference in the dentist salary really amazes me. It's almost $15,000 a year. That's as much as a person in the U.S. working a minimum wage job can make working full time for an an entire year, so if you think about it, that's nearly an entire extra income. Plus, who couldn't use an extra $15,000?
ReplyDeleteTo think that the difference between men and women's wages was even more different years ago. And to me, equal pay seems like such an obvious right and necessity. It is simply astonishing that this is still a struggle in nations like Australia and the U.S. in the 21st century. It's not just a problem, but an obvious problem, and yet wage disparities according to sex are still occurring.
I like that people are openly admitting these issues, but am interested in knowing more about what people are doing to safeguard against it. You would think that some type of law exists to criminalize sexual discrimination of wages?
Yeah- you'd think it would be obvious, but for some reason it's not. When you compound race upon gender I'm sure the disparity only increases. It makes me pretty upset that this nonsense is persisting in such an age as ours. Also- that people will openly support or defend this discriminatory system.
DeleteEvery time you complete a government form it asks you to check a little box regarding sex. Every pay check I receive has what I've made up to that point and how many hours I've out in to work. Since tax season is here, I think about how government agencies like the IRS are also privileged to such information. So, it's not simply that the government is blind to pay discrepancies between sexes. They can visibly see that two persons of the same occupation working the same amount of hours, but of different sexes, are making notably different sums of money. Of course more external factors have to be taken into consideration, like states with a higher cost of living typically have higher wages. Therefore, you can't necessarily make comparisons without controlling for all factors but sex. But, when differences in pay are so drastic and all other factors are the same but sex, you would think there would be more government resolutions being offered. It's truly astonishing.
ReplyDeleteThis is seriously the most degrading thing I have seen in a while...men and women both go to school and study the exact same things yet we make less? how is this fair at all?
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you Tori. This makes me so mad. I don't understand why women make less money. Women that go to work are still expected to keep up with the housework and maintain their career, yet they are being paid less. This makes no sense to me at all.
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