When Will Employers Stop Treating Women Like Second Class Citizens?

Women, tired of being treated like second class citizens in the workplace earnings arena, are demanding through law suits and legislation that they receive equal pay for comparable jobs performed by men. Studies and research show that women still earn less than men in almost all occupations. The US Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor statistics show that women working full time still earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. The gap is even wider with minority women. African American women earn 71 cents to the dollar of what men earn. And Hispanic women make only 62 cents. This hardly seems fair to anyone with a conscious.

Women's salaries are outpaced by men almost everywhere from the highest paying occupations to the lowest paying occupations. Everywhere from doctors and lawyers to cashiers and lesser positions, women earn less than their male counterparts. In those few areas, where women earn more, the earnings are roughly $369 per week, hardly high enough for anyone to shout about. And those occupations with the lowest weekly earnings for full time employment have twice as many women as men. So women excel in the lowest paying jobs that men neither want nor need to take.

This wage discrimination affects women from the start of working until retirement. And it starts early about one year after women enter the working place. Women straight out of college begin to earn less than men one year later. The amount of a woman's wages determines her benefits for Social Security and pension. Over the lifetime of a working woman, new research shows that a woman's earnings are $400,000 less than a comparable male counterpart over a 35 year working life. Evidence shows this is due to unequal pay practices, namely discrimination.

On Tuesday, April 12, 2011, known as Equal Pay Day, Senator Tom Harkin (D. IA) will introduce the Fair Pay Act of 2011 which would require employers to provide equal pay for jobs that are comparable in skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions. Senator Harkin's bill would also require employers to disclose the pay scales and rates for all job categories at a given company. This would help give women the information they need to identify pay for job categories without disclosing the employee's names.

With women making up roughly 46% of the US working population, it's a wonder why women earn less. The real and only obvious reason is pay discrimination. The woman dean of the Senate, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D. MD) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D. CT) have co-sponsored the Paycheck Fairness Act which will require that an employer must justify paying a man more than a woman for the same job and would make it easier for women to file class action suits against their employers for alleged sex-based discrimination.

The real way these sex discrimination practices will change is by hitting employers where they hurt most, in their checkbooks. If cases such as Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the largest class action fair pay case ever filed, with millions of women workers, are allowed to go forward and succeed, employers will re-think their strategy to save money on the backs of women. And women will receive their back pay in full. This will be a just reward and change the present pervasive culture that still treats women like second class citizens in the workplace.

Women have come a long way but still have got a long way to go to equal a man's paycheck. In the words of Aretha Franklin, all women want is R-E-S-P-E-C-T and it's about time.

 

Follow Debbie Hines on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Legalspeaks

Comments

[rongalan]

04:46 PM on 04/14/2011

My ex-wife always made more money than I did. More women are going to college than men. Who is treating women like second class citizens? To see how women are treated as first class citizens, read the e-book "How to Seduce A Married Woman", available at HowtoseduceAmarriedwoman.com.

It's time to stop the whining.

[rightwing927]

03:07 PM on 04/14/2011

Is this an all out effort to see how many lies can be spread by HuffPo/AOL in one day? The wage gap is a complete myth.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/the_wage_gap_myth.html

[AustinG]

12:26 PM on 04/13/2011

The drum beat goes on. Studies that show that women make less also show that they work less. They ignore facts like men being 20x more likely to die on the job than women. That men are more likely to take jobs where you have to work weekends or during the night shift which pay more. I could go on, but most should get it by now. Differences in pay represent different choices that each group makes on AVERAGE. Minority women are more likely to be single mothers. Single mothers have their own unique difficulties which demand that they have flexible hours.

The good news moving forward is that I think technology is changing and that many of those obstacles will be able to be overcome. Communication today is simply easier.

[jsul]

02:50 PM on 04/12/2011

This is a non-story, debunked over and over and over again (in fact, just today, see "There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap" at WSJ.com)


Let's stop with the divisive gender-identity politics and get on with job creation.

[Linda from Deerfield]

01:12 PM on 04/13/2011

The gap is real -- you've seen the data -- and what's more, it is probably the reason that wage growth has reversed and fallen below the rate of inflation for 95% of earners -- wage stagnation is in perfect sync with the increasing proportion of women in the workforce. Now male unemployment exceeds women's. Why hire a man when a woman will do the job for less? If there is no gap, then it would mean that men's wages have been plunging for decades and they don't even seem to know it.

[edtastic]

11:44 PM on 04/13/2011

Hmmm... That would imply women entered the workforce as they moved from home makers into the work place thus mitigating the effect of scarcity in the labor market driving down wages. Women would be hired at entry level positions thus get paid less than men. That would correlate with the generational relationship in the wage gap. Young women start work sooner with more education thus don't suffer from any wage gap. While older women started later and had less seniority. Not to mention being surrounded by older peers with old attitudes. The wage gap is no longer a problem for people born after 1980. The graduation gap between men and women is a problem and women are clearly doing better.

[OldTulsan]

02:10 PM on 04/12/2011

The answer:

When it hurts employers' wallets.

[Candide08]

01:32 PM on 04/12/2011

Well, let's see.

Most of the rest of the world treats Women like property, a bit worse than second class citizens. Most major corporations today are multi-national, so these attitudes towards women are prevalent there.

Women's rights have a long, long way to go - in a very hostile environment.
We can start here, in the US - by not voting Republican.