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Have you ever thought, “Hey, it’s 2016! Why is the media still telling us that women are paid less than men?”
Yes, it is 2016, but equal pay for women in the workforce is still a very relevant issue in the U.S. Despite all the evidence, some still question the topic’s importance, arguing that women have already accomplished the same level of value as men in terms of business. Well, women aren’t bringing this topic up for fun – these problems are still very real.
As female actress Jennifer Lawrence recently put it in her Lenny Letter article calling out the Hollywood wage gap, “I don’t think I’ve ever worked for a man in charge who spent time contemplating what angle he should use to have his voice heard. It’s just heard.” This inspirational celebrity is making sure we don’t forget about this pressing cultural issue.
In that spirit, here is a list of 4 reasons why the battle for monetary equality for women is not over yet:
It’s not new information that women generally get paid 79 cents for every dollar that men make. The reason that April 12 was chosen as the national day of equal pay in the U.S. is due to the fact that it would take approximately four months into the new year (the last year including) for a woman to earn as much as a man did in the prior year. To put it into perspective, that’s almost half an extra year of work labor required for the same amount of pay. This statistic doesn’t even include mothers or black women in the U.S., the latter of whom have to work an additional seven months into the new year in order to make the same amount as their white male counterparts.
The U.S. women’s soccer team has been in the spotlight over the past year following their victory over Japan in the 2015 women’s World Cup. Recently brought to attention in April was the fact that this stellar team of women is not getting paid the same amount as their male soccer counterparts. Five of the players on the team filed a complaint against the United States Soccer Federation, claiming that there is a 25 percent wage gap between male and female soccer players. This enormous gap is largely due to the fact that the men’s team wins a bonus regardless of whether they win the game while women do not. In response to this revelation, a poll was taken among American citizens which found that 88% of Democrats, 63% of Independents, and 55% of Republicans are in favor of these women receiving equal pay.
Most recently, the star of the Netflix series “House of Cards,” Robin Wright, publicly stated that she had to demand equal pay as her co-star on the show, Kevin Spacey. In a similar case last year, there was an outcry against Patricia Arquette following her speech at the 2015 Oscars. While accepting her award for her role in the critically acclaimed film “Boyhood,” she chose to call out not only the movie industry but all institutions which still choose not to acknowledge the large wage gap between men and women workers. Even speaking out about such fundamental issues that exist for women in a variety of jobs, she was still ridiculed for her stance. Many other women who argue for equal treatment are left in the same position.
This not only rings true for high versus low paying occupations, but even fields that are traditionally run by women grant women lower wages than men who do the same job. Women earn less in 98% of occupations in the workforce. How is this still not a relevant issue? The 7 surprising occupations in which women do consistently earn more than men? Crane and tower operators, dietitians and nutritionists, Highway maintenance, transportation, meter readers, telecommunication line repairers and installers, and wood-sawing machine operators.
The issue of unequal pay has not been resolved, no matter what the media tells us. It is still a relevant problem for women in occupations throughout the U.S., and it should remain a surface topic until all women are satisfied that their hard work and dedication to long hours is paying off as equally as their male counterparts.
