PAY GAP BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

 

 

Very often we hear about the fact that women are paid less for doing the same job as men, which means women are paid less just for being women. But why does this happen?

It wasn’t very long ago that most women didn’t work outside the home at all. In 1950s there weren’t very many women in the workforce and the women there were were  often not as well educated as the men. 70% of them had menial job on factory assembly lines or in office and the only professional job was  teaching. Discrimination against women was also totally legal, allowing employers to put out job listing for men only.

The big pay gap was caused by several interconnected factors, like lower female education rates, women not being in the workforce in big numbers, grouping in traditionally feminine industries, the fact that it was perfectly legal to pay women less and then a slew of cultural norms about gender roles and aptitudes (women are less intelligent, women can’t hold power,  women should raise children and be homemakers).

Nowadays most of them shrunk, except for one: women should bear children. Surveys show only a fraction of the population thinks women should work full-time when they have young kids. Instead for men most   people think that new fathers should work full-time. Even when a mother does work full-time just like her male partner, she spends 9 hours a week more than him on childcare and housework. Many women have to decide whether to pursue their careers or stop to have children, while men are free to continue their careers as they are usually not seen as the main parent figure. But is this really right?

The best solution would be for both mother and father to take care of their children fairly, not putting all the work on the mother. The state can help us in this, since parental leave has not been introduced long ago, which also allows fathers to leave work to allow mothers to work.

Silvia, 5sc