America is the land of equal opportunity — it gives an equal opportunity for anything, good or bad, to happen. But it does not give every citizen the fair chance to succeed, no matter how hard one works, or how hard one believes in the American dream.
Discrimination, in regard to race and ethnicity, is imbrued into the fabric of the U.S. like a blood stain in a white T-shirt. But what is often forgotten is the modern day discrimination against female workers.
Shippensburg University students of the women’s and gender studies department did not forget this last week on Equal Pay Day, when they asked everyone to wear red to bring awareness to the issue — an issue with astounding statistics.
Four hundred and five minus 365 is 40 — the approximate number of extra days a woman would have to work to earn the same amount of money a man would make in a year, according to a recently published Pew Research Center report. That means women earn 84 percent, or 84 cents to the dollar, compared to what men make.
The striking inequality was supposedly outlawed under former President John F. Kennedy’s administration with the Equal Pay Act of 1963, but the problem still remains to this day.
The issue does not just affect women, but it has a direct impact on their families, too.
“When women are not paid fairly, not only do they suffer, but so do their families,” the White House website states.
President Barack Obama initiated multiple executive actions throughout his two terms in order to combat the discrimination. One of them, a 2013 National Equal Pay Task Force, reported the wage gap to be at 77 percent in 2011, up from 59 percent in 1963. Though progress has been made, nearly half a century is a long time to hardly be halfway done with fixing the problem.
The wage gap is in some ways a controversial topic in that not everyone concurs blatant statistics can be used to analyze such a complex issue.
Factors such as the general education, experience and occupation of women are said to not be properly taken into account when putting the wage gap figures into context.
“It doesn’t give us a very accurate view of what’s happening in the work place,” said Sabrina Schaeffer, director of the Independent Women’s Forum, according to U.S. News. Schaeffer dispelled the wage gap, referring to such statistics as “a myth.”
The issue with the statistics is derived not from comparing the education levels and job position of women to men. A person’s academic achievement and occupational level are common standards to determine how much to pay someone.
If critics of the wage gap are correct in saying the statistics are inaccurate, then the problem of sexism in the workplace may stem from institutional sexism in American society.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) claims part of the reason the gap in pay exists is because women choose “traditionally female-dominated industries,” which have jobs that typically pay less.
The question is, if women have the same opportunity to get higher paying jobs, why do they not have them?
“There are several factors that lead women to traditionally female-dominated roles, including gendered socialization that trains girls from childhood to embody the sorts of traits that translate well into traditionally feminine jobs centered on nurturing, service and supporting other people in their jobs,” CAP states on its website.
Socialization from birth affects both men and women, and it can be a root cause in understanding why the average earnings of men and women are different.
A more obvious factor is the so-called “glass ceiling,” which is a term used to describe an invisible barrier that prevents women and minorities from obtaining high paying executive positions in the work force.
Whatever the cause of financial inequality for men and women is, it does exist — the question is, why and how did it start and persist?
“There are multiple ways to measure the pay gap — but under all of them, and with or without considering occupation, female and minority workers earn significantly less than white male workers,” the White House’s equal pay task force report states.
Inequality in the workplace is a global issue that is largely the result of culture and tradition. Over the past several generations in the U.S., the call to change those traditions has been made clear by both men and women through free speech and political action.

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