The Gender Pay Gap

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This issue with gender pay gap has been going on for centuries in some countries, and in the United States it has been happening since the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. Even though there has been some decrease in the gap between genders, there is still plenty of work that needs to be done in this area. There was a recent study that found that women account for 47 percent of the labor force and that women earned 78% of what a median man working full-time makes (Council of Economic Advisors Issue Brief, 2015). If an employee were to try and close the pay gap one way to do so is to increase the minimum of wage of your organization. The reason is that since the there is a disproportionate amount of women working in lower-wage positions (Council …show more content…
This kind of system can possibly decrease the pay gap between genders. Ivancevich, Konopaske and Matteson (2014) write that this system has 4 advantages that can also positively affect an organization. The first advantage is that this system increases its flexibility on the organization’s workers (Ivancevich, Konopaske and Matteson, 2014). With this advantage one can say that since all of the employees know how to run everyone else’s positions, all of the workers should receive similar compensation because of it. The second advantage is the worker’s pay doesn’t depend on classification and the organization will need fewer distinct job characteristics (Ivancevich, Konopaske and Matteson, 2014). With this advantage this can increase homogeneity within the positions at the organization, and therefore, better influence people or person making the salary decisions to treat everyone equally. The third advantage is that the organization can save money because their workers are interchangeable (Ivancevich, Konopaske and Matteson, 2014). With this money saved and organization will have less of an excuse not to pay everyone equally. The last advantage that this system has is that organization’s may experience fewer turnover and absenteeism (Ivancevich, Konopaske and Matteson, …show more content…
There are some federal cases that tried to address the gender gap issue. For example, 1963 amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act, 2007 Lebetter v. Goodyear and more. How much power do we want to give our government in addressing unfairness? Throughout history it sometimes takes the federal government to intervene in injustices. From stopping segregation, enslavement, voting rights etc. Will it take a forceful federal law to address this issue? For example, if a company is caught that a male in a certain position is making more than a woman in the same position, can the federal government intervene and make the organization pay them both the same, with all over variables being equal. Does the threat of fines and possible imprisonment can change the gender pay gap? The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (2015) wrote that in 2015 is has received the most sex-based charges ever recorded for that year but yet organizations continue to keep doing the same thing so maybe harsher punishment is the