The Gender Pay Gap

The gender pay gap is an issue that is unfortunately still alive in 2017. It has been more than fifty years since President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, and since Congress signed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned sex discrimination in the workplace (Coukos). However, women are still earning less than men and statistics show that the wage gap has been closing at a very slow-pace since then. Back in 1963, a woman working full-time earned on average about 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man. In 2015, women were earning about 79 cents compared to one dollar earned by men. This shows that the wage gap has only been narrowing in the last decades by less than half a cent every year (“The Wage Gap Over …show more content…
First of all, two main assumptions need to be recognized from this theory: knowledge is believed to be socially situated and one of these locations, the standpoint of women, “is privileged because it provides a vantage point that reveals the truth of social reality” (Hekman 347). Thus, the problem of gender pay gap is examined by women as a result of their own experiences in the workplace to show the rest what social reality means for them. Women express their concern as members of a marginalized group, unlike men or anyone above them, who are more likely to claim that this issue is not a big deal and will eventually go away. Smith would clearly ask “why are we getting paid more than men?” Along with many other women, she would answer by saying that they’re not seen as a needed or a vital part of the workforce (Zerka). Smith would also wonder why this problem hasn’t been resolved yet. She would answer by saying that it’s because the problem of the gender pay gap has been incorporated into an elaborated structure where “the power of men over women has been united with the power of the dominant classes over the mass of people,” and then displaced onto the struggles of the bureaucracy and the legal system (Smith, The Conceptual Practices of Power). Her response is to some extent linked to Marxist ideals, since she places women in a subordinate social position to explain why …show more content…
Smith points out that in pre-capitalist societies, the production of goods was enjoyed by those who produced these things. In a capitalist society, however, production is not made for the subsistence of the worker because “it is governed by the relations of capital accumulation” (Smith 38, Writing the Social). workers in pre-capitalist societies also used their production to provide for the child-bearers of their families, but when capital became the main driving force in society, only those who were able to sell their labour to earn wages could provide for their households. From this point on, a sphere controlled by consumerism, money, and commodities became the “main business” in which women, childcare, and family became peripheral. This “main business” was institutionalized with interests and practices that restricted access “to the ruled, the marginal, and the excluded,” that is, women (Smith 38-40, Writing the Social). From a feminist standpoint, the gender wage gap goes beyond the different occupations chosen by men and women and the discrepancies in their salaries. The current debate on this issue gets stuck in these details. Smith points out that the real problem of male-dominance in the workplace not only has a long trajectory in contemporary capitalism, but it will be properly addressed when sociological

Show More

Related Documents: The Gender Pay Gap