Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Women's Inequality in the Workplace

Despite the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Liberation, and also the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women are nevertheless not measured in equal terms within the workforce. It has been more than forty many years since the initial legislation was passed by Congress to prohibit discrimination in accordance with gender, as part on the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Yet, workingwomen continue to earn a smaller amount than men. In accordance with a recent U.S. Census Bureau report, women earned 76 cents on the dollar vs. their male counterparts in 2003. Studies have shown that even as soon as thinking variables just like children, women earn at least 20 cents, per hour, less than men. (www.uaw.org) Despite efforts along with a sense of continued progress toward gender equality inside workplace, the government has confirmed how the workplace earnings gap in between folks even now persists today. According to General Accounting Office, the weekly earnings of full-time workingwomen have been about three-fourths of men's during 2001. The report was prepared from a discover of the income history of more than 9,300 People for the last 18 years. Even accounting for factors for instance occupation, industry, race, marital popularity and work tenure, reports the GAO, working women today earn an average of 80 cents for each dollar earned by their male counterparts. This pay gap has persisted for ones past a couple of decades, remaining fairly consistent from 1983-2000. (Longley, 2005) Statistics don’t lie. Women have made some progress inside the work force, but inequities exist each in terms of pay and opportunities and with increasingly larger numbers of women participating in the jobs force, the number of persons effected by this inequity continues to grow.
Discrimination from the workforce, particularly by women, happens inside type of reduced wages and opportunity for advancement. Quite a few women (as well as men) commence in positions that occupy the bottom rung on the company. Far more always than not, men are promoted out of these positions and rise within the company. Although women may move a little higher up the corporate ladder, they can in no way really get on the top managerial positions that men occupy. “Due on the lack of promotions between women, they often are much less almost certainly to get jobs that include benefits, on the job training, and any opportunities to become leaders in the company. The glass ceiling theory explains why women can not seem to have the top positions in many companies. According to this theory, although women could be able to see the top with the corporate ladder, they are even now unable to climb it. Inside a recent discover it was reported that unfortunately 97% of managerial positions inside the Fortune 1,000 companies had been white males.” (Geddes, 1998) This inequality is not a new phenomenon, but a single using a long-standing history. Ahead of the 1960s, it was well-known for newspapers to publish separate task listings for men and women. Work have been categorized according to sex, of the greater level work listed virtually exclusively under "Help Wanted—Male." In some cases the ads ran identical jobs under male and female listings— but with separate pay scales. During this period of time, women with full time work earned on average in between 59–64 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned from the exact same job. It wasn't until the passage on the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 1963 (effective June 11, 1964) that it became illegal to pay women lower rates to your same career strictly on the basis of their sex. The act was gradually expanded over the next decade to include a bigger segment from the workforce, and between June of 1964 and January of 1971 back wages totaling more than $26 million have been paid to 71,000 women. Affirmative action, seeking to overcome the final results of segregation and other types of discrimination started from the 1960s. Although it's usually framed solely in racial terms, affirmative action is a essential tool that expands opportunities for women. It has opened many doors that had been traditionally closed to women and has helped women make very good advances in education and employment.
Women have created significant gains more than the past 25 years. The percentage of women in the work force has increased from 59 percent in 1970 to 72 percent in 1995. Women also have narrowed the wage gap with men and earn 72 percent from the average male worker's wage, compared to earning just 56 percent in 1969. The average women's full-time weekly wage also increased in real terms, up 31 percent during this same period, though inflation-adjusted full-time wages for men have stagnated, rising a smaller amount than Three percent from the past 25 years. (Geddes, 1998) Research shows that African-American, Asian, and Latina women professionals and managers continue to trail white people in compensation and promotions, said Carol J. Evans, chief executive and president of New York-based Working Mother Media, which convened the meeting. One measure of the difference in between white and minority women is pay. White females earn 73 cents for every dollar earned by a white male, according to a learn released last month by the Institute for Women's Policy Look for in Washington, D.C. By contrast, Asian women earn 68 cents, African-American women, 64 cents, Native American women, 58 cents, and Latina women earn 51 cents per dollar. The learn included executives and frontline workers. Women overall produced essential progress in terms of promotions in 2002 but minority women saw few gains, in accordance with Catalyst, the New York women's search group. It reported that almost 16 percent of officers at Fortune 500 firms had been women, up from 12.5 percent in 2000. Once the group looked at minority women, however, it discovered only 1.5 percent were corporate officers in 2002, up from 1.3 percent in 2000. (Lewis, 2004) 
“Pay inequity hurts women and their families and robs them of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and retirement more than their lifetime.  Eliminating this inequity is nothing short of a national priority.” (Schakowsky, 2000) Nationally, women earn 75 cents for every dollar that men earn.  African American women earn 65 cents for each dollar a man earns.  And Latina women earn only 58 cents for each dollar that a man earns.  In Illinois, women earn 72 cents for every dollar that a man earns.  Women of color earn 62 cents for every dollar earned by men.  
“A working woman’s loved ones loses on average $4000 each year as a result of this inequity.  And in Illinois, women lose on average $4,913 a year.   The inequity compounds over the years.  A 25-year-old working woman will lose $523,000 during her lifetime due to this wage gap. And when she retires, she will collect a little pension and a smaller amount Social Security.” (Schakowsky,2000)
According to Dr. Audrey Murrel, wage inequity is still a essential dilemma within our economy. Murrel believes that women are nevertheless underrepresented in key leadership positions across all forms of organizations and industries. Even within comparable positions, the gap in pay persists and gets wider as women advance in their careers. Now, some men and women will argue that the gap in salary between men and women has decreased more than the past decade. But the fact is that about 60% on the improvement inside the wage gap during the last 15 many years can also be attributed towards the decline in men's earnings— not the advancement of women's earnings. Collectively, women lose over $100 billion annually in wages due to pay inequity. Based on a recent report, a 25-year-old woman who works full time for the next 40 years will earn about $500k less than the average 25-year-old man, if contemporary wage patterns continue. That may be a crucial loss to families,communities, our economy and of course, the women themselves. The economic impact of this wage inequity stretches far beyond the checkbooks of used women. At the quite least, these women are supporting themselves. It's even much more almost certainly that they're a considerable contributor to the household income, if not the soul assist of their household. The end result surely has an impact on a overall economy as women, who are not in a position to fully assist their families, need to turn to others for financial assistance.
The Bush administration has repeatedly undermined laws and policies that support workplace equality for women. Under his watch, the Department of Labor announced that it would remove a critical anti-discrimination tool, the Equal Opportunity Survey, that's needed to ensure that corporations obtaining federal dollars supply equal employment opportunities to their workers.  The effect of eliminating this survey will likely be a benefit to people federal contractors that receive millions of funds in taxpayer-funded government contracts every year. They will no longer be monitored by the federal government to make certain that fair wages are paid. Bush has enacted other policies that extra weaken women’s rights. The Administration has tried to weaken the 86-year-old Women’s Bureau, the only federal agency whose jobs is solely devoted to the concerns of women inside workplace. Early on in the Bush administration, the Department of Labor erased all information about eradicating the wage gap from the Women’s Bureau website. Recently, it announced a plan to outsource half with the task positions at the Women’s Bureau national office, which would cripple the Bureau’s ability to advance working women’s concerns. And in 2001, the Department of Labor tried but failed to close the 10 regional offices in the Women’s Bureau. (Greenberger, 2006) 
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