Although over the past years the gender disparity in education and the workplace has decreased it still remains an issue largely in need of radical change. Some problems relating to this gender disparity include the significant wage gap between men and women, gender inequality in education, and lack of women in leadership positions.
The statistics regarding the wage gap between men and women are alarming. On average, women earn 30% less than men in the same occupation. Women experience the pay gap in every state, with Louisiana at the end of the spectrum where women are paid only 66% of what men earn. Women face this issue in nearly every occupation regardless of whether the workplace is female-dominated, male-dominated, or gender balanced. The pay gap hasn’t budged in nearly a decade.
Another major problem is inequality in education. Although gender parity has been achieved when it comes to primary education, as students grow older the disparity widens. For example in Sub-Saharan Africa only 64 girls for every 100 boys pursue a college education. The gender inequality in education, where there is less female education at each level of male education, leads to less educated mothers which fail to provide intellectually stimulating environments for their children. This in turn results in a lower quality of students which leads to a lower quality labor force which ultimately results in lower economic growth. Another problem in education is the lack of women pursuing careers in STEM. Due to conditioning that starts at a young age, girls are led to believe that a technical education is something that is more suitable for men. As a woman in a STEM field, I can attest that the males largely outnumber the females in all of my classes. This huge aversity that women have developed towards pursuing a technical career leads to the world losing out on potentially great minds and this needs to change.
Lastly another major problem is the significant gap of women in leadership positions, whether it be in the business world or the political world. According to a study conducted of 1,660 business school graduates, which examined the nature of projects given to high potential employees, it was found that men received more of the critical assignments that lead to advancement than women. Even more alarmingly, data from Kinsey’s survey of 60 major corporations showed that only 19% of executives in the C-suite where women. In relation to the political world women remain vastly underrepresented in national and local assemblies. Although it has been shown that women’s participation in public office promotes cleaner government practices and less corruption the unequal rights and socioeconomic status of women limit their ability to influence decisions in their communities and national level.
These are all issues that should concern not just women but also men. As Hillary Clinton said in the UN Fourth World Conference on Women “As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, the potential of the human family to create a peaceful and prosperous world will not be realized.”
Sources:
http://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/
http://www.ravishly.com/2015/03/16/gender-equality-isnt-just-womens-issue-interview-elizabeth-nyamayaro-un-heforshe-founder
https://hbr.org/2013/09/women-in-the-workplace-a-research-roundup
