The current workplace sees a wide disparity between genders. Women choose to take jobs that are safer and closer to home thus allowing them to spend more time with family. The real underlying problem is that women are just following traditional gender roles, which cause them to make less money. Data shows that unmarried women who have never had a child actually make more money than unmarried men.
There are large disparities in jobs that are more dangerous and thus pay more. These jobs include “Fishers, loggers, aircraft pilots, farmers and ranchers, roofers, iron and steel workers, refuse and recyclable material collectors, industrial machinery installation and repair, truck drivers, construction laborers” as mentioned by Steve Tobak. This leads to the fact that women don’t choose jobs in STEM fields. A 2009 White House report shows that only 9% of women professionals are employed in jobs in high paying computer and engineering fields compared to 38% for male professionals. Women simply tend to gravitate towards low paying education and health care professions according to the report due to the traditional gender role of being a nurturing person.
Another issue we see in society is what is often referred to as the glass ceiling. This imaginary barrier is what women attribute to their inability to advance in the workplace due to prejudices. The idea stems from many decades ago when men dominated every aspect of business and people lived in an extremely patriarchal society. With more women attending college than men nowadays, we must assume that these high profile positions are being filled by under qualified people because they are male dominated. Times have changed since but women still feel there is this blockade stopping them from having a successful career.
A final gender issue is the responsibility of taking care of children. Traditionally men are the breadwinners while women have the ability of taking maternity leave to take care of their children and then continue on with their careers after a period of a few months. Men’s jobs simply don’t give them the ability to take a maternity leave to take care of their children, which is a problem that should be addressed. This further stems to the idea that stay at home dads are seen as a low and weak person for letting the mother take care of providing for the family. These gender prejudices are what stop our society from advancing to the idealistic equal wage for genders.
Ultimately the female workforce is not diversified enough to close the wage gap. Simply forcing women into top-level positions won’t fix anything just as the same analogy can be made for diversifying specialized high schools won’t solve the problem of undereducated minorities. Ultimately neither men or women shouldn’t be forced into certain professions for the sake of having gender equality, people should follow their dreams in life that stem from their natural interests.
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Michal, I’d like to touch upon the “glass ceiling” that you mentioned. In my problems piece, I stated the breakdown of gender distribution of higher-ranking positions. According to the piece, women make up 53% of entry-level employees, 40% of managers, 35% of directors, 27% of vice presidents, 24% of senior vice presidents, and 19% of executives in the C-suite. For some reason, women are rarely hired to management positions. I think that much of this can be attributed to this glass ceiling that you mentioned. Women are 33% more likely to earn a college degree than men are. Yet, there is still this gender divide where men are being placed into these higher-ranking positions even though they may be under-qualified. In present-day society, I feel as though women are timid at times when it comes to applying for these positions. They are just as qualified and on many occasions fit the role better than the man they are competing against. If women as a whole are able to come to this realization and gain the confidence to consistently attack these positions, this glass ceiling may one day shatter. With a renewed sense of confidence and some assistance from women’s rights organizations, this gender divide will become less and less visible and equality will become a more attainable goal.